UNICEF is calling for greater international attention on the “forgotten crisis”, as an estimated 25.6 million people face acute hunger.

Dozens of civilians have been killed and thousands more displaced in Sudan’s Gezira state, humanitarian groups said, after days of attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

A doctors’ union and a youth group said the RSF attacked several villages and towns in the east-central state of Gezira, looting and vandalizing public and private property, leaving dozens dead, the Associated Press news agency reported on Saturday.

RSF attacks in al-Sireha, a village in Gezira state, continued for three days, leaving 50 people dead in a single day, according to humanitarian groups that tracked the deaths and published the list, seen by Al Jazeera.

A network of activists in the region told the AFP news agency that Friday’s attack left at least 50 people dead, while the Soudan News (sudanakhbar) website reported that so far 124 people had been killed. were killed and 200 injured.

Sudan plunged into conflict in April 2023, when long-running tensions between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo erupted into a conflict that has until has now displaced more than 10 million people, according to UN data, and has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Since September, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been waging a major offensive to regain control of the RSF in and around the capital, Khartoum.

In al-Sireha alone, RSF fighters killed at least 50 people and injured 200, the Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war, told the AP Friday evening.

In the village of Saqiaah, at least 12 other people were killed, the group said.

She confirmed the death toll to AFP on Saturday, specifying that since the attack on Friday morning, rescuers and villagers had not been able to evacuate the injured “because of the bombings and snipers” of the RSF.

The Sudanese Doctors’ Union said RSF advances had transformed the eastern Gezira areas into “a brutal war zone”.

“Forgotten crisis”

Ted Chaiban, deputy director of UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, called for greater international attention to the “forgotten crisis” in Sudan.

In an interview with the AP on Friday, Chaiban said the war had created “one of the most acute crises in living memory,” with more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes, plunging Sudan in the world’s largest displacement crisis.

“We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers in a generation,” he said.

Around 25.6 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – are expected to face acute famine this year due to the conflict.

UNICEF and the UN refugee agency UNHCR are calling for unhindered access to people in need across the country.

The war has been marked by atrocities such as mass rapes and “ethnic cleansing”, which the UN says constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in the western region of Darfur, which faced a violent attack from the RSF.