Port Sudan: Around 25 people have died in a boat sinking in the Blue Nile River in Sudan’s southeastern state of Sennar while trying to flee ongoing fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces, a pro-democracy activists’ committee said on Thursday.
The incident occurred as the group attempted to cross the Blue Nile River in the southeastern state of Sennar, where escalating violence has led to a surge in civilian displacements. “Around 25 citizens, most of them women and children, have died in a boat sinking,” the local resistance committee said in a statement.
The local resistance committee, actively involved in organizing pro-democracy protests and providing frontline aid, described the event as a devastating loss for multiple families.
“Entire families perished in the boat sinking,” the committee lamented, attributing the deaths to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) recent advance through Sennar. The RSF, a paramilitary group, had seized control of Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, prompting a mass exodus of over 55,000 people in just three days, according to the United Nations.
Witnesses recounted harrowing scenes of RSF forces sweeping through neighboring villages, compelling residents to flee in small wooden boats across the Nile River in desperate attempts to reach safety.
The humanitarian crisis has further intensified with an estimated 120,000 displaced persons arriving in neighboring Gedaref state this week alone. Ahmed al-Amin Adam, the state’s health minister, confirmed that 90,000 had been officially registered, highlighting the scale of the displacement crisis in Sudan.
The United Nations has declared the situation in Sudan as the world’s worst displacement crisis, with over 10 million people currently displaced across the country. The conflict, which erupted in April 2023 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has exacted a heavy toll.
Estimates suggest tens of thousands have lost their lives in the conflict, with some reports citing a death toll as high as 150,000, according to Tom Perriello, the United States envoy to Sudan.
