UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Sudan’s warring military and paramilitary forces are escalating attacks with outside powers “fueling the fire,” which is intensifying the nightmare of hunger and disease for millions, the United Nations chief said Monday. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the U.N.
Security Council that the 18-month war faces the serious possibility of “igniting regional instability from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea.” In a grim report, Guterres said the Sudanese people are living through numerous “nightmares” – from killings and “unspeakable atrocities” including widespread rapes to fast-spreading diseases, mass ethnic violence, and 750,000 people facing “catastrophic food insecurity” and famine conditions in North Darfur displacement sites. He singled out “ shocking reports of mass killings and sexual violence ” in villages in east-central Gezira province in recent days.
The U.N. and a doctors’ group said paramilitary fighters ran riot in the region in a multi-day attack that killed more than 120 people in one town.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital Khartoum and spread to other regions including western Darfur. The war has killed more than 24,000 people so far, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a group monitoring the conflict since it started. It has created the world's worst displace.