Sudanese suffer sexual violence on 'sickening scale,' UN says

FILE PHOTO: The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York August 15, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sexual violence is being committed in Sudan on a "sickening scale," while fighting in the Darfur region is reopening "old wounds of ethnic tension" that could engulf the country, United Nations officials told the Security Council on Wednesday.

"The alarming accounts of sexual violence that are heard from people who have fled to Port Sudan are just a fraction of those being repeated at a sickening scale from conflict hotspots across the country," said senior U.N. aid official Edem Wosornu.