More than 4 million refugees have fled Sudan civil war, UN says

The number of people who have fled Sudan since the beginning of its civil war in 2023 has surpassed four million, U.N. refugee agency officials said on Tuesday, adding that many survivors faced inadequate shelter due to funding shortages.

"Now in its third year, the 4 million people is a devastating milestone in what is the world's most damaging displacement crisis at the moment," U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Eujin Byun told a Geneva press briefing.

"If the conflict continues in Sudan, thousands more people, we expect thousands more people will continue to flee, putting regional and global stability at stake," she said.

Sudan, which erupted in violence in April 2023, shares borders with seven countries: Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Libya.

More than 800,000 of the refugees have arrived in Chad, where their shelter conditions are dire due to funding shortages, with only 14% of funding appeals met, UNHCR's Dossou Patrice Ahouansou told the same briefing.

"This is an unprecedented crisis that we are facing. This is a crisis of humanity. This is a crisis of ... protection based on the violence that refugees are reporting," he said.

Many of those fleeing reported surviving terror and violence, he added, describing meeting a seven-year-old girl in Chad who was hurt in an attack on her home in Sudan's Zamzam displacement camp that killed her father and two brothers and had to have her leg amputated during her escape. Her mother had been killed in an earlier attack, he said.

Other refugees told stories of armed groups taking their horses and donkeys and forcing adults to draw their own family members by cart as they fled, he said.

Britain's top diplomat David Lammy said on Monday that Sudan was experiencing "the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world", calling for international attention on the war-torn country.

"The crisis in Sudan... is the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world currently and it is a matter of deep, deep concern," Lammy told an event in Morocco organised by the foundation of British-Sudanese businessman Mo Ibrahim.

Lammy decried "an ambivalence, equivocation and certainly an absence of exposure to this crisis globally, and across much of the Western world".

"So that is why I made up my mind very early in office that I would do all I could as UK foreign secretary to draw attention to this crisis," he told the forum in Marrakesh.

UN convoy attacked in Darfur

A U.N. convoy delivering food into Sudan's Al-Fashir in North Darfur came under attack overnight, a spokesperson for the U.N. children's agency told Reuters on Tuesday, adding that initial reports indicated "multiple casualties".

"We have received information about a convoy with WFP and UNICEF trucks being attacked last night while positioned in Al Koma, North Darfur, waiting for approval to proceed to Al-Fashir," a UNICEF spokesperson said in response to questions. She did not say who was responsible.

Famine conditions have previously been reported in Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, as two years of war has cut off supplies.