UN warns Sudan conflict ‘threatens to consume the entire country’

Al Jazeera :
War and hunger risk destroying Sudan where fighting between rival generals erupted in mid-April, the United Nations has warned.

“The war in Sudan is fuelling a humanitarian emergency of epic proportions,” Martin Griffiths, the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator said in a statement on Friday.

“The viral conflict – and the hunger, disease and displacement left in its wake – now threatens to consume the entire country,” he said, mentioning specific concerns about the safety of civilians in the country’s breadbasket Gezira state.

Conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) say nearly 5,000 people have been killed.

But the battles have prevented the recovery of the bodies of many others thought to have died.

In the four months since fighting broke out, more than 4.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes, according to UN figures.