WAR-TORN Sudan is now gripped by a new cholera epidemic, international doctors’ agency Doctors Without Borders said today.

The group, known as MSF from its original French title, said an alarming spike in cholera cases began in the last fortnight, with Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city across the Nile, the epicentre.

MSF’s Sudan co-ordinator Joyce Bakker said the group had treated almost 2,000 suspected cholera cases in the last week alone, and said over 170 people had died. In March, MSF said that 92 people had died of cholera in Sudan’s White Nile State, where 2,700 people had contracted the disease since late February.

Sudan’s Health Minister Haitham Ibrahim said the outbreak could be caused by people returning to the capital region after having fled their homes in earlier phases of the war. The Sudanese military has largely secured control of Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces militia, with which it collaborated to suppress the country’s democratic revolution in 2021 but fell out with in 2023, plunging the country into war.