Sudan's RSF advances on Wad Madani as eight-month-old war spreads

FILE PHOTO: A Sudanese family who fled the conflict in Murnei in Sudan's Darfur region, sit beside their belongings while waiting to be registered by UNHCR upon crossing the border between Sudan and Chad in Adre, Chad, July 26, 2023. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

DUBAI (Reuters) -Sudan's army was trying to hold off attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Friday near Wad Madani, a major city in a region that had been sheltered from fighting and taken in hundreds of thousands of civilians during eight months of war.

Clashes in the area, about 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Khartoum, threaten to open a new front in a conflict that has displaced nearly 7 million people, left the capital in ruins and triggered waves of ethnically driven killings in Darfur.