UN officials have said that one side in the Sudan conflict has seized control of a national health lab in the capital of Khartoum that holds biological material, calling it an “extremely dangerous” development.
The announcement came on Tuesday and UN officials warned that more refugees could flee Sudan despite a ceasefire between rival forces.

Dr Nima Saeed Abid, the World Health Organization’s representative in Sudan, expressed concerns as it is extremely, extremely dangerous because the lab has polio, cholera and measles isolates.

The expulsion of technicians and power cuts in Khartoum mean that “it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials that are stored in the lab for medical purposes,” he said. “There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties.”

Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, assigned to the post of WHO representative in Sudan, effective Aug. 4, 2020, addressed reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, via video link.

The lab is located in central Khartoum, close to flashpoints of the fighting that pits Sudan’s military against the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias implicated in atrocities in the Darfur conflict.

Dozens of hospitals have shuttered in Khartoum and elsewhere across the country due to the fighting and dwindling medical and fuel supplies, according to the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate.

“If the violence does not stop, there is a danger that the health system will collapse,” the UN agency already warned Friday.

Since the outbreak of fighting on April 15, at least 20,000 Sudanese have fled into Chad. Some 4,000 South Sudanese refugees who had been living in Sudan have returned to their home country, UN refugee agency spokeswoman Olga Sarrado said.

The figures could rise, she cautioned. Sarrado did not have numbers for the five other countries neighboring Sudan, but the UNHCR has cited unspecified numbers of those fleeing Sudan arriving in Egypt.

The UNHCR was scaling up its operations, she said, even as foreign governments have raced to evacuate their embassy staff and citizens from Sudan. Many Sudanese have desperately sought ways to escape the chaos, fearing late their all-out battle for power once evacuations are completed.

Several previous cease-fires have failed, although intermittent lulls during the weekend’s major Muslim holiday allowed for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners by air and land.