Senior UN officials have warned the Security Council of the risks of a new front opening in Sudan, around the town of el-Fasher in Darfur, where the population is already on the brink of starvation.
After a year of civil war between the main armed forces [SAF] of General Abdel Fattah al Burhan and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces [RSF], under the command of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the country is experiencing "a crisis of epic proportions... wholly man-made," Rosemary DiCarlo, UN under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, denounced on Friday.
"The warring parties have ignored repeated calls to cease their hostilities... Instead, they have stepped up preparations for further fighting, with both the SAF and the RSF continuing their campaigns to recruit civilians," DiCarlo said.
Communal strife
In particular, she voiced concern at reports of a possible "imminent" attack by the RSF on el-Fasher, the only capital of the five Darfur states it does not control, "raising the spectre of a new front in the conflict."
El-Fasher acts as a humanitarian hub for Darfur, which is home to around a quarter of Sudan's 48 million inhabitants.
Until recently, el-Fasher had been relatively unaffected by the fighting, hosting a large number of refugees.
But since mid-April, bombardments and clashes have been reported in the surrounding villages.
Brink of famine
"Since then, there have been continuing reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city, resulting in more than 36,000 people displaced," said Edem Wosornu, a director at for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, noting that Doctors Without Borders has treated more than 100 casualties in recent days.
"The total number of civilian casualties is likely much higher."
"The violence poses an extreme and immediate danger to the 800,000 civilians who reside in el-Fasher. And it risks triggering further violence in other parts of Darfur," she warned.
DiCarlo added that fighting in el-Fasher "could unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur" and further hamper the distribution of humanitarian aid in a region "already on the brink of famine."
Alarming numbers
The region was already ravaged more than 20 years ago by the scorched-earth policy carried out by the Janjaweed — a militant group who have since joined the RSF.
According to Doctors Without Borders [or MSF], over 8.4 million people have fled their homes since the fighting broke out in Sudan on April 15 last year, with around 1.8 million fleeing the country.
Estimates suggest nearly 15,000 people have been killed so far in the violence, and the UN recently said thousands of people are still fleeing the country every day.
Despite the alarming numbers, the international response was very weak, with only five percent of the needed humanitarian plan funded, aid groups say.
Many rounds of negotiations have been held — mostly mediated by Saudi Arabia and the US — but failed to yield any results or cessation of hostilities.
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