The number of people fleeing Sudan’s fighting abroad has surpassed 500,000 and the number of internally displaced people has reached two million, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Tuesday.
“Today we passed the mark of half a million refugees from Sudan since the conflict began,” the UN official told a news conference in Nairobi. “Two million people are displaced in the country,” he said.
More than 2,000 people have died since the conflict broke out between the army commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries Rapid Support Forces (FSR) under General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo on April 15, according to the NGO Acled.
“If we don’t silence these guns, the exodus of the Sudanese people will continue,” warned Filippo Grandi.
He spoke on World Refugee Day, a day after a United Nations-sponsored donors’ conference raised nearly $1.5 billion to help tackle Sudan’s humanitarian crisis and help neighboring countries host those fleeing the fighting.
The international community on Monday pledged about $1.5 billion to help war-torn Sudan, which UN chief Antonio Guterres said is sinking into destruction and violence at an “unprecedented” rate.