The U.N. human rights chief warned of the risk of a further escalation of the war in Sudan on Thursday and said there was a growing risk of deaths from starvation on a wide scale.
Volker Türk’s warning came a day after the U.N. World Food Program has temporarily stopped distributing food aid in a famine-struck camp for displaced people in Sudan’s North Darfur amid escalating violence.
“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 told the Human Rights Council in Geneva. “The danger of escalation has never been higher.”