Rhino: Agencies – Thousands of people were stranded on the streets of the eastern Sudanese city of Kassala as heavy rains exacerbated the suffering of more than one million Sudanese who have fled to the region to seek refuge from the 15-month-old war.

The rainy season, which began earlier this month, has damaged shelters and rendered roads unusable, and will put millions at risk of contracting water-borne diseases from stagnant water in large parts of the country.

This comes as the number of displaced people inside Sudan continues to grow, now exceeding ten million, as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) take over more and more territory in the ongoing war between them and the army.

Some 765,000 people are displaced in Gedaref state, and more than 255,000 in Kassala state, which the UN says was hit by the worst rains earlier this week.

In the latest wave of displacement, 165,000 people have fled Sennar state, many of whom fled on foot amid the rains of the past few weeks. More than 10,000 people arrived in the city of Kassala and crammed into a few buildings that had spaces including a school yard and an empty warehouse, but these were quickly flooded.

Nada Omar, a displaced woman, told Reuters: ‘So far, we haven’t found a place to settle, the sun is over our heads, we’ve accepted the sun, but when the rain comes, we can’t stand it, we go in here and they take us out. The owner of this restaurant lets us in, but he lets us out at the call to dawn: ‘Get out, get out,’ and with small children in tow, we left.)

Displaced people are now waiting under shop umbrellas or under tarpaulins on the street, with heavier-than-normal rainfall forecast to continue into September. A government official and aid workers said some of the displaced have rejected a plan to relocate them outside the city, where there would be few income opportunities.

‘We were surprised by the water, two children and an elderly woman were martyred, and we were sitting in the street and had nowhere to settle,’ said Hussein Abdullah, another displaced person.

At least five people were reportedly killed by the rains, the UN said.

Those who came earlier from Khartoum or Gezira state, or from the drier Gedaref state, were not much better off, sleeping on the floor in schools with few services and makeshift toilets that were also flooded.

The rainy season is affecting much of the country. Last week’s rains destroyed more than 1,000 homes and 800 latrines in Zam Zam camp in North Darfur, one of the locations in the country where experts say famine is possible.

The advance of the RSF, which on Monday said it had reached an area about 180 km from Gedaref, one of the states where the largest number of people are sheltering.

Kassala, the only neighboring state controlled by the military, does not have the capacity to absorb people from Gedaref, nor does Port Sudan, which has become the military’s capital.