UN warns of mass exodus as Sudan truce violated

The UN on Monday warned that more than 800,000 people could flee fighting in Sudan, where gun battles and explosions again shook the capital in violation of the latest truce agreed between warring generals.

The chaos and bloodshed, now in their third week, have already sparked an exodus of tens of thousands of Sudanese to neighbouring countries including Egypt, Chad and Central African Republic.

But the United Nations refugee agency said it was bracing for "the possibility that over 800,000 people may flee the fighting in Sudan for neighbouring countries".

"We hope it doesn't come to that, but if violence doesn't stop we will see more people forced to flee Sudan seeking safety," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in a tweet, adding to UN alarm over what the world body calls a catastrophic humanitarian situation sparked by the three-week-old war.

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Hundreds have been killed and thousands wounded since fighting erupted on April 15 between Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Millions of Sudanese unable to afford the inflated prices required to escape the battles have sheltered in their homes with dwindling food and water and frequent power cuts.

In Khartoum, a witness heard "eight air strikes from military aircraft", while gunfire and explosions sounded in various neighbourhoods.

Burhan and Daglo, who fell out after the military's 2021 coup derailed Sudan's democratic transition, have flouted multiple ceasefires and extended the latest by 72 hours late on Sunday.

Experts agree the truces have largely been announced to enable evacuation corridors, and talks with mediators.

While foreign nations have helped thousands of their citizens escape by air, road and sea, at least 75,000 Sudanese are internally displaced and more than 50,000 have already escaped overland to neighbours, said the UN and other agencies.

At a makeshift camp in a Chadian border village, UN workers handed out emergency supplies to families, many of whom made desperate getaways from Sudan's Darfur region empty-handed.

Mahamat Hassan Hamad, a tailor, tried to hold back tears as he told AFP he had no food for his children and no means of work because, "My sewing machines were taken by the attackers." He blamed the RSF who "destroyed everything in their path."

Sudan's turmoil has seen aid workers killed, hospitals shelled, humanitarian facilities looted, and foreign aid groups forced to suspend most of their operations.

"The scale and speed of what is unfolding is unprecedented in Sudan," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Top UN humanitarian official Martin Griffiths arrived in Nairobi on an urgent mission to look for ways to bring relief to millions.

"The humanitarian situation is reaching breaking point," he said on Twitter, later calling it "catastrophic".

The UN World Food Programme said it expected to soon resume food distribution in some parts of the country after a suspension following the deaths of three of its aid workers.

Even before the war, more than 15 million people faced severe food insecurity in Sudan, WFP said.

At least 528 people have been killed and almost 4,600 wounded in the violence, according to Sudan's health ministry, but the real death toll is feared to be far higher.

Fighting has spread across Sudan, including to the long-troubled Darfur region, where the UN said at least 96 people were reported killed in El Geneina, the West Darfur capital.

Daglo's RSF emerged from the Janjaweed unleashed during a scorched-earth campaign in Darfur from 2003 by former strongman Omar al-Bashir, who faces charges of war crimes and genocide.

The fighting was pushing Sudan's already ailing health sector toward "disaster", warned the WHO's regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed al-Mandhari.

He sounded an alarm over the growing threat of cholera, malaria and other diseases as the rainy season nears and safe water supplies are becoming scarce.

A first Red Cross plane on Sunday took eight tonnes of medical supplies from Jordan to Port Sudan, which has served as an evacuation hub.

On Monday a US-operated evacuation ship arrived in Saudi Arabia from Sudan carrying more than 300 civilians from multiple countries, Saudi state media said.

Saudi Arabia is among regional powers trying to end the violence.

An envoy of Burhan's, Dufallah al-Haj Ali, met on Sunday in Riyadh with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and is due to visit Cairo for talks with Egypt's foreign minister on Tuesday.

Egypt, in an Arab League emergency meeting in Cairo, proposed a draft resolution Monday that called for an "immediate and comprehensive cessation" of fighting.

But experts have cast doubt over foreign mediation efforts. Veteran Sudan analyst Alex de Waal described them as "half-hearted and belated".

He accused the previous US administration of delegating policy to its "favoured allies in the Middle East", who feared democratic transition in Sudan and "preferred to deal directly with their favoured generals".