Khartoum

A ship carrying over 2,400 tons of humanitarian aid left the Turkish port of the southern province of Mersin on Saturday, bound for the war-torn African nation of Sudan.

Aid groups are warning that Sudan's "man-made famine" could be even worse than feared, with the most catastrophic death toll the world has seen in decades, without more global pressure on warring generals.

A U.N.-backed study said Thursday that 755,000 people are on the brink of starvation in Sudan, a death toll not seen since the 1980s when famine in Ethiopia shocked the world.

Sudan is experiencing "one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory" and "the largest internal displacement crisis in the world", the United Nations says.

It is also on track to become "the world's worst hunger crisis".

Aid workers have called it the "forgotten war" affecting a country of 48 million — more than half of whom they say need humanitarian assistance.

Sudan's nine-month-old war has so far largely spared the country's east. But with the frontline inching ever closer, and reports of military training camps across the border in Eritrea, the fragile peace there is in jeopardy.

Sudan's war has already killed thousands, including between 10,000 and 15,000 in a single city in the western Darfur region, according to U.N. experts.

Sudan's devastating nine-month war between two rival generals is spreading to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an NGO reported late Tuesday, sounding the alarm for the remains of the ancient Kingdom of Kush.

The U.N. Security Council expressed "alarm" at growing violence in war-torn Sudan on Friday, a day after it reported that seven million people have been displaced by the conflict.

For months, Sudan's army kept silent amid alleged Emirati interference in the country's civil war, but its anger has finally boiled over, leading to harsh exchanges between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi.

The brutal conflict broke out in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing more than 12,000 people and displacing millions.

Sudan's rival generals have returned to the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia, but the fighting shows no sign of easing as they wrestle to control the country's second-largest city.

The United States has confirmed that it has ordered the evacuation of some staff and families from its embassy in Niger, less than a day after first reports that Washington was preparing the move.

Sudan is on the brink of "full-scale civil war," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned, three months after the army and a powerful paramilitary force clashed in the capital, two neighboring towns, the western Darfur region and other parts of the country.