Rights chief Turk warns of ‘explosion into chaos’ unless action is taken to end war as famine strikes deeper.

More than 600,000 people in Sudan are “on the brink of starvation” as famine stalks the war-torn country, the United Nations has warned.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday that famine had taken hold in five areas across the country, including Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur, where the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and medical charity Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF) were forced to suspend operations amid escalating violence earlier this week.

Addressing the UN Human Rights Council, Turk said Sudan was “looking into the abyss”, warning that famine could hit five more areas in the next three months, with a further 17 considered at risk in what he described as the “world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe”.

“Sudan is a powder keg, on the verge of a further explosion into chaos, and at increasing risk of atrocity crimes and mass deaths from famine,” he said, urging immediate action to “end the war, deliver emergency aid, and get agriculture back on its feet”.

MSF suspended operations in and around Zamzam, where half a million people have sought refuge, on Monday, with WFP following suit on Wednesday as fighting intensified between the military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.

WFP had been feeding approximately 300,000 of Zamzam’s residents, but had only reached about 60,000 people this month amid intensified shelling, with one attack destroying the camp’s central open market.

Edem Wosornu, the UN humanitarian operations director, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that satellite imagery showed heavy weapons were used in and around Zamzam in recent weeks.

Zamzam camp is located 12 kilometres (6.5 miles) south of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which the RSF has been trying to take for months.

‘Endless cycle of violence’

The war, which broke out in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands and caused what Turk called the “biggest displacement crisis in the world”, with more than 12 million people forced from their homes to camps and other locations inside and outside Sudan’s borders.

Turk said that recent moves by the RSF towards establishing governing authority in areas it controls were likely to “further entrench divisions and the risk of continued hostilities”.

He estimated that some 30.4 million people need assistance, including food and healthcare. Sudan’s health system is under severe stress, with fewer than 30 percent of hospitals and clinics still working and disease spreading in the country’s displacement camps.

Cholera is currently surging in the southern state of White Nile, killing at least 70 people and infecting more than 2,200, according to Save the Children, citing Ministry of Health data on Thursday.

The outbreak followed a reported drone strike on the area’s Um Dabakar power station, which disrupted access to clean water in the city of Kosti.

The country has recorded more than 55,000 cholera cases and more than 1,400 deaths since the outbreak began in August last year, according to the Health Ministry.

“Children in Sudan are caught in an endless cycle of violence, disease and hunger, with devastating impact,” said Mohamed Abdiladif, Save the Children’s country director for Sudan.