The United Nations’ migration agency reported Sunday that escalating violence across western and southern Sudan has forcibly displaced more than 10,000 civilians within a devastating 72-hour period this week, marking one of the most intense displacement crises in the ongoing conflict.
According to the International Organization for Migration, attacks on December 25-26 targeting the villages of Um Baru and Kernoi near Sudan’s western border with Chad alone displaced over 7,000 individuals. This surge in violence comes as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues its westward expansion after capturing the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher in October.
The RSF’s recent offensive has pushed through territories inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group, areas traditionally controlled by militia forces allied with Sudan’s regular army. The conflict reached international dimensions on Friday when an RSF drone strike killed two Chadian soldiers in the border town of Tine, according to Chadian military sources.
Simultaneously, between Christmas Eve and Friday, approximately 3,100 additional civilians fled the famine-stricken city of Kadugli in South Kordofan, which has endured a paramilitary siege for more than eighteen months. Resource-rich Kordofan has become the epicenter of intensified fighting as RSF and allied forces attempt to reclaim Sudan’s central corridor from Darfur toward the capital Khartoum.
Since April 2023, the brutal confrontation between Sudan’s regular army and the RSF has created what the UN characterizes as a ‘war of atrocities,’ resulting in tens of thousands of fatalities and displacing over 11 million people nationwide. The conflict has effectively bifurcated the country, with army forces controlling northern, eastern, and central regions while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, through alliances, significant portions of southern territories.
This devastating war has generated the world’s most severe hunger and displacement crises, with humanitarian conditions deteriorating rapidly as fighting intensifies across multiple fronts.