A police force forcibly evicted hundreds of displaced Sudanese civilians who had taken refuge in a school in the eastern state of Gadaref on Wednesday, witnesses told AFP, as the war between the armed forces and paramilitaries that broke out on April 15 continued to rage.

“The police arrived, ordered us to leave the school, following the governor’s decision, and tear gassed us,” said Hussein Gomaa, an internally displaced person from the capital Khartoum.

Gandaref has hosted some 273,000 people who have been forcibly displaced by the war between the armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries.

Local resident Amal Hussain said she saw “police vehicles surrounding” the educational institution and then heard screams.

“We are 770 people who left Khartoum to escape the war and had taken refuge in this school,” Mr Gomaa explained, adding that he and hundreds of other civilians were receiving “help” there.

“We don’t understand why they kicked us out,” he added. “Now, having wives and children with us, we have nowhere to lay our heads and we don’t know where to go.”

According to the UN, thousands of people live in makeshift camps or structures such as schools and are faced with a lack of food, drinking water, healthcare…

Two hours after their violent eviction, Suleiman Mohamed, who also lived there, said the evacuees were pushed back again, “from the dormitories” of Gadaref University’s medical school. “The police said it was a decision taken by the governor,” he added.

After Saudi- and US-sponsored ceasefire talks failed this week, a local volunteer committee has spoken of an “escalation of fighting” in a densely populated northern suburb of the capital Khartoum.

Of the 4.6 million people internally displaced in Sudan, more than 4 million fled to escape the fighting in the capital, according to United Nations estimates.

The African country, which was already among the poorest in the world before the war, is experiencing an “unthinkable humanitarian crisis”, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said yesterday, adding that most hospitals are closed and that millions of citizens urgently need aid.

In the vast Darfur region (west), scene of some of the worst fighting, the DTY say they have captured all major cities.

The advance of the paramilitaries and their allies and the simultaneous disruption of telecommunications networks raise fears of new ethnically motivated mass killings.