Over 700,000 displaced due to Sudanese war: UN

More than 700,000 people are displaced because of the war between Sudan's generals that is having severe consequences for civilians, the United Nations said Tuesday, News.Az reports citing AFP.

Hundreds have already been killed in the fighting but new worries emerged as separate ethnic clashes claimed at least 16 lives in the country's south, and a powerful group in the east, an area so far untouched by the war, demonstrated to support the army.

Over 700,000 people are now internally displaced by battles which are now in their fourth week, Paul Dillon, spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration, said in Geneva.

"Last Tuesday, the figure stood at 340,000."

An increasing number are also crossing borders to escape the battles between the army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Fighting has been concentrated in the capital Khartoum but other areas, particularly the western Darfur region bordering Chad, have also seen heavy fighting.

Besides the internally displaced, another 150,000 have fled to neighboring countries, the U.N. refugee agency said on Monday.

Those left behind in the war zones face shortages of water, electricity, food and medical care in a country where, according to the U.N., about one-third of the population needed humanitarian assistance even before fighting began.

Foreign-led evacuations by land, sea and air have seen the departure of thousands of other people, many of them from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, which has so far been peaceful.

But a demonstration on Monday to support the army, which some called on to arm civilians, raised alarms in a country already marked by a history of ethnic unrest.

"One army, one people," hundreds of protesters belonging to the Beja people chanted.

They also called "no to negotiations," a reference to truce talks happening across the sea in the Saudi city of Jeddah between army and RSF representatives.

Those talks, also backed by the United States, have yielded no progress as fighting continues.

News.Az 

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