(Geneva) Deadly fighting in Sudan has displaced more than 330,000 people internally, while another 100,000 have fled to countries in the region, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Sudan’s aid package for this year is currently only 14% funded and aid agencies are $1.5 billion short of the humanitarian crisis aggravated by ongoing fighting. .

A spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Jens Laerke, called on the international community on Tuesday to support humanitarian workers.

“Without this, they simply cannot operate”, he argued during the regular UN briefing in Geneva, noting that humanitarian agencies were already short of funds to finance their humanitarian operations in Sudan even before the current escalation.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), these clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), since mid-April, have forced more than 334,000 people to flee inside the country. country.

“The number of displaced people over the past two weeks exceeds all conflict-related displacements in Sudan in 2022,” an IOM spokesperson said during the press briefing.

On the ground, fierce fighting continued in Sudan on Tuesday, with the fighting parties ignoring a constantly violated truce, while the international community was alarmed by a humanitarian situation that was turning into “catastrophe”.

The UN fears a mass exodus from Sudan and estimates that “more than 800,000 people” could flee the country. The bulk is expected to go to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, according to UNHCR.

“ This emergency is in its early stages, and we are trying to put numbers to give an idea of ​​the magnitude of this emergency ”, explained a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR), Olga Sarrado, during the press briefing in Geneva.

UNHCR is currently registering the refugees and should have a better picture of the situation in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, “it is estimated that more than 100,000” the number of people who have fled Sudan to neighboring countries, said Ms. Sarrado. But “it is very difficult to predict what will happen. It will depend on what happens in Sudan,” she insisted.

The WHO has once again alerted to the health risks. In addition, she indicated that the risk associated with the taking of a laboratory by combatants was now considered “moderate”.