Millions are displaced and starving as two generals fight for power and other countries pursue their own interests

Even before a communications blackout hit Sudan two weeks ago , few were watching a war that has killed thousands of people and displaced more – almost 8 million – than any other current conflict. “It’s not a forgotten crisis. It’s a wholly ignored crisis,” Kitty van der Heijden of Unicef told a meeting at the Munich Security Conference last week.

Eighteen million people in Sudan are acutely food insecure , and around 3.8 million children are malnourished. At the Zamzam camp in Darfur, a child dies every two hours . There have been widespread atrocities including massacres and sexual violence. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warns that “ textbook ethnic cleansing ” in Darfur – by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militias – has forced almost 700,000 to flee. Yet while the region’s genocidal violence became a global cause two decades ago, it barely registers now.

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At least 10 killed in latest bombing raid in El Daein as Sudan’s 10-month conflict shows no sign of abating

The bombing started at midnight. According to local residents, Sudanese army aircraft hit an industrial area in El Daein, the capital of East Darfur state, then the city’s main market and at least two other neighbourhoods.

In total at least 10 people died in the attack in the early hours of Tuesday morning, including two refugees from South Sudan and six people displaced from elsewhere in Darfur. Dozens were injured, and hundreds of homes reportedly destroyed.

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Malnutrition and disease are rife at the ‘overwhelmed’ Zamzam camp – one of hundreds in Sudan, where war has displaced nearly 8 million people

Everyone knows a family that has lost a child in Zamzam, a camp for hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region. Hunger and disease have become grim features of daily life, and a child is dying in the camp every two hours, according to the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

“There have been many, I cannot remember them all. The latest died yesterday,” says Laila Ahmed, who lives in the camp with her nine children.

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Claim by Rapid Support Forces to have taken the trade hub of Nyala could mark a turning point in the war

The paramilitaries fighting Sudan’s army say they have seized control of Nyala, the country’s second largest city, in a potential turning point in the six-month war.

The Rapid Support Forces said in a statement that they had taken over the army’s main headquarters in city, which is the capital of South Darfur state, and seized all of its equipment. The RSF published video, which Reuters could not verify, of its soldiers celebrating with gunfire, claiming to have overrun the base.

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Some of the people evacuated by British after civil war broke out say they have received no information from Home Office about their future

People who were evacuated to the UK from war-torn Sudan fear they will be left in limbo when their six-month visas begin to expire this week. Evacuees, who have been living in hotels or with family members since April, say they have received no information from the Home Office about their future status.

“I’m worried that on 26 October I finish the six months and if nothing happens with my visa and there’s no extension I’ll become an illegal immigrant,” said Azza Ahmed, who was a university lecturer in the capital, Khartoum, and is now living in a hotel in London with her son.

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From a remote air base in Chad, the Emirates is giving arms and medical treatment to fighters on one side in Sudan’s spiraling war, officials say.

Latest atrocities in Sudan war include the shelling of house of traditional healer, who died with her children and neighbours

People trapped in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman say civilians are being deliberately targeted in shelling by the warring parties.

A woman who had been helping wounded soldiers was killed along with her three children and six neighbours when her home was shelled by Sudanese army forces earlier this week.

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The war between Sudan’s two generals has sparked the resurgence of brutal ethnic violence

When fighting erupted in Khartoum four months ago, the immediate horror at its impact on civilians was shadowed by a still greater fear – that the conflict between two warring generals might swiftly spread through the rest of Sudan, causing still more suffering, destabilising neighbours and, in particular, sparking fresh ethnic violence in Darfur.

Those fears swiftly came to pass: “We are not on the precipice of a human catastrophe, we are in the midst of one,” the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, warned last month.

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Africa minister says civilian death toll horrific and UK is to send evidence to UN

War crimes and atrocities against civilians are being committed in Darfur, western Sudan, UK Africa minister Andrew Mitchell said on Tuesday, becoming one of the first western officials to identify that the fighting in Sudan has developed into more than a power struggle between two rival factions.

Mitchell said there was growing evidence of serious atrocities being committed, describing the civilian death toll as horrific in a statement released by the Foreign Office. “Reports of deliberate targeting and mass displacement of the Masalit community in Darfur are particularly shocking and abhorrent. Intentional directing of attacks at the civilian population is a war crime.”

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