GENEVA: More than 55,000 Sudanese refugees have crossed into eastern Chad since the start of the year, the United Nations said Friday, warning that the displacement was accelerating even as aid funding falls far short.

The war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023 has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.

Currently, some 11.3 million people remain forcibly displaced due to the conflict, including 6.4 million people inside the country and 3.5 million who have fled across borders as refugees, UN figures show.

Among them are nearly one million who have crossed into Chad, the UNHCR refugee agency said Friday, cautioning that continued fighting and worsening insecurity in parts of Sudan was now forcing more families to seek safety across the border.

“More than 55,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to eastern Chad so far this year,” Mamadou Dian Balde, the UN’s regional refugee coordinator for the Sudan situation, told reporters in Geneva.

And Balde, who also heads the UNHCR’s eastern and southern Africa operations, warned that “over the past week, the pace of arrivals has accelerated sharply”.

He said “more than 400 people a day were now crossing the border areas of Adre and Tine in eastern Chad -- “around 20 times the daily rate seen over the previous few months”.

The situation was particularly dire in the Darfur states, as well as in Kordofan and Blue Nile states, he said, with fighting, including airstrikes and drone attacks, forcing more people to flee and complicating humanitarian access.

At the same time, Balde cautioned that “humanitarian support is not keeping pace with needs”.

UNHCR says it so far has received only 18 percent of the $1.6 billion required this year to respond to regional refugee needs linked to the Sudan crisis.

In Chad, Balde said more than 190,000 refugees remained in difficult conditions in border areas, with most refugees now surviving on less than half the minimum amount of water needed daily.

The transit centre in Tine, for instance, was already hosting more than 4,300 people amid “urgent needs for shelter, water, sanitation and protection services”, he said.

UNHCR warned that the declining support risked pushing refugees to move on in search of safety, legal status and a viable future.

“What people are going to do is to vote with their feet, and this is what we are starting to see in relation to Europe, but also in relation to other routes,” Balde said.