At least 413 people have been killed and 3,551 injured in Sudan since conflict broke out between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
The new assessment was made at a press conference in Geneva by a WHO spokeswoman, Margaret Harris.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Thursday that several attacks had been reported on health facilities, some occupied by fighters, with most left without access to electricity, food, water and medical supplies.
At a press conference, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder warned that millions of Sudanese children are at risk due to the escalating conflict.
“Sudan already had one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world, and now the conflict has cut off help for 50,000 children with this problem,” Elder warned.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced this week that between 10,000 and 20,000 people, mostly women and children, have already fled Sudan’s Darfur region into neighboring Chad, which was previously home to about 400,000 refugees from Sudan.
Clashes broke out on April 15 over disagreements over army reform and the integration of the Rapid Support Forces into the armed forces, part of the political process towards democracy in Sudan after the 2021 coup.
The coup was carried out jointly by the head of the Sudanese army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the leader of the paramilitary group, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”, who are now the protagonists of the clashes.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on Thursday called for an immediate truce of at least three days in the African country.
The 72-hour truce, which coincides with the end of Ramadan, has been accepted by the RSF, but the Sudanese army has yet to respond.
Source: TSF
