The fighting in Sudan has prompted many people to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries.
The picture is “very chaotic”, UNHCR refugee agency spokesman Matt Saltmarsh told AFP on Friday.
“There are huge numbers of people moving inside the country but also moving towards the borders,” he added, noting the numbers “will be in the hundreds of thousands.”
Here is an overview of the situation:
Refugees, IDPs in Sudan
Sudan hosted 1.13 million refugees before the conflict started — one of the largest refugee populations in Africa.
Of those, 800,000 are South Sudanese, with Eritreans the second-largest group, numbering 126,000. There are also 58,000 Ethiopians, mainly hosted in two eastern camps.
Axel Bisschop, the UNHCR’s representative in Sudan, said Friday that up to 30,000 people, mainly South Sudanese refugees had moved south from Khartoum to White Nile State, closer to their own border.
He added that Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees are also moving closer to their own borders.
Sudan counts around 3.7 million internally displaced persons, mostly in the volatile western Darfur region.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Tuesday that “at least 75,000 people have been internally displaced in Sudan by the crisis”.
It said that in the South Darfur region, up to 37,000 people are thought to have been displaced across Nyala town.
Fleeing abroad
Sudan shares a border, in order of length, with South Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya and the Central African Republic.
UNHCR is planning for three scenarios: Sudanese refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries; refugees hosted by Sudan returning home and refugees hosted by Sudan moving to other neighbouring countries.
