The clashes between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that broke out on April 15 left at least 676 dead, more than 5,576 injured and almost a million internally displaced or refugees to other countriesaccording to the latest estimate from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), presented this Sunday.
To these figures must be added another 25 dead and 90 injured in episodes of intercommunal violence in Western Kordofan, and another 29 dead and 40 injured in White Nile.
More than 936,000 people have been recently displaced by the conflict since April 15, including some 736,200 people internally displaced since the conflict began and some 200,000 people who have crossed into neighboring countries, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
Almost half are 450,000 children who have been forced to flee their homesincluding some 368,000 internally displaced persons and 82,000 who have fled to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Women and children, detailed OCHA, represent more than 75% of secondary displaced refugees. Before the conflict, there were 3.7 million internally displaced persons and 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers in Sudan.
“In the period between April 15 and May 13, some 88,873 people fled from Sudan to Egypt,” UNHCR said on its official Twitter account, where it clarified that among these displaced “83,758 are Sudanese while 5,115 are of other nationalities.”
The UN agency said Friday that Sudanese displaced to neighboring countries have reached 200,000, of whom the vast majority are women and children.
For his part, The Sudanese Army resumed its shelling on Sunday against positions of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries in Khartoumwhile waiting for the restart in Saudi Arabia of the negotiations on the conditions that the parties must respect for the entry of urgent aid to Sudanese civilians after a month of continuous fighting.
Residents in Khartoum told the agency EFE that Army fighters once again attacked paramilitary group posts in the south and center of the capital, as well as the southern part of the neighboring city of Um Dorman, where the FAR has occupied buildings of some vital institutions since the start of the clashes, on April 15.
They also registered street shootings in some neighborhoods in the south and north of the capital, scenes during the early morning of air raids and successive explosions, they added.
Although the conflict is now in the process of being resolved, the UN warned, the persistence of tension and sporadic fighting threaten the planting season, which will begin at the end of May. The loss of the season will mean a drastic increase in the hungry population in a country where a third of the population already needed food aid before the outbreak of the conflict.
The conflicting Sudanese parties on Friday closed the call Jeddah Declarationmediated by Saudi Arabia and the United States, which is an agreement in principle to allow the entry of humanitarian aid and protect civilians.
Sudan borders on seven African countries that fear that the consequences of hostilities, such as the displacement crisis or insecurity at their borders, will directly affect them.
(With information from Europa Press and EFE)
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