The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) has said it is alarmed by the escalating fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region.
It says around 800 people have been killed following recent clashes between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
A local civil society group – the Roots Organisation for Human Rights – says as many as 1,300 have died since last Friday around the city of El Geneina, and blames the RSF for the killings.
The UNHCR says that in the last week alone at least 8,000 people have fled into neighbouring Chad, some of whom say they’ve been subjected to sexual violence, torture and extortion.
The RSF is alleged to have targeted the region’s non-Arab population, something which it has previously denied.