GENEVA: Advances by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan could trigger another exodus across the country’s borders, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has said.
The RSF took over Darfur’s city of El-Fashir in late October in one of its biggest gains of the 2-1/2-year war with Sudan’s army. This month, advances have continued eastward into the Kordofan region and they seized the country’s biggest oil field.
Most of the estimated 40,000 people that the UN says have been displaced by the latest violence in Kordofan — a region comprising of three states in central and southern Sudan — have sought refuge within the country, Grandi said, but that could change if violence spreads to a large city like El-Obeid.
The war has uprooted nearly 12 million people, including 4.3 million who have fled to Chad, South Sudan and elsewhere.
“If that were to be — not necessarily taken — but engulfed by the war, I am pretty sure we would see more exodus,” said Grandi from Port Sudan.
