A surging number of hungry refugees are fleeing fighting in Sudan where some are reduced to foraging in the wild, the UN said Monday as rebels said a Sudanese bomb killed a mother and two children. There has been “a notable increase in the number of new arrivals” who have crossed the border from South Kordofan into South Sudan’s Unity state, the United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) said in its weekly bulletin. The refugees are fleeing fighting between Sudanese troops and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), it said. An average of 234 people crossed into the South every day in April, compared with 84 per day in February and March, the bulletin added. The most serious border clashes yet between Sudan and South Sudan raged in April around the Heglig oil region, which is part of South Kordofan state. South Sudan occupied the Heglig area for 10 days and the South carried out air strikes over the border in Unity state. Elsewhere in South Kordofan, SPLM-N rebels besieged the town of Talodi into early April and, after a lull, fighting in the area intensified later in the month.
