Over 200,000 people newly displaced in Sudan’s Kordofan as fighting rages

UN warns of surging displacement in Kordofan as power and water infrastructure come under attack in El Obeid.

More than 200,000 people have been newly displaced across Sudan’s Kordofan region due to intensified fighting since late last year, the United Nations has said, as continued drone attacks target critical water and electricity infrastructure in the region’s biggest city, El Obeid.

The warning from the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) came on Wednesday as seasonal flooding in nearby North Darfur state also compounded the displacement crisis.

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“The warning signs are impossible to ignore,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope. “Across Sudan, families are fleeing violence, losing access to water, electricity and healthcare, and now facing the added burden of destructive floods.”

According to the IOM, displacement in the Sheikan district, which includes the city of El Obeid, has surged 25 percent over the past eight months.

In El Obeid, repeated fighting and drone attacks on the city’s main power transformer have knocked out electricity needed to pump water, run hospitals and keep phone lines working, the organisation said.

In Blue Nile state, some 78,000 people have also fled their homes, the IOM said, while in West Darfur, about 18,000 others were displaced in the first half of August.

Meanwhile in North Darfur, heavy rains in the Tawila area have damaged nearly 1,350 homes, displacing more than 1,000 families, the UN organisation added.

“Sudan is one of the world’s largest displacement crises,” Pope said. “The combined impact of conflict, infrastructure damage and flooding is stretching thousands of families beyond their limits.”

Since the war began in April 2023, an estimated 59,000 people have been killed, while 8.6 million people have been internally displaced. More than 4.2 million people have also fled to neighbouring countries.

Some 33.7 million people require humanitarian assistance, according to the UN.

Reporting from one of the main roads leading to El Obeid, Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid described a route where drones belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary have targeted army vehicles, oil tankers and cargo trucks.

The Sudanese army-held city has endured one of the longest sieges of the war, but the RSF “still maintains position south and west to the city and still continues attacking nearby villages”, Alruhaid said, adding that this was further worsening the humanitarian situation in the region.

El Obeid had a population of 750,000 people before the war, but authorities now estimate the population has reached 3.4 million, according to the Sudan Tribune.

Save the Children, a humanitarian group, said that nearly 39,000 children have arrived here in the first six months of this year.