Devastating attacks on a camp hosting hundreds of thousands of people who had fled Sudan's civil war have continued for a third day, residents have told the BBC.

One person in the Zamzam camp described the situation as "catastrophic" while another said things were "dire".

More than 100 civilians, among them at least 20 children and a medical team, have been killed in a series of assaults that began late last week in Sudan's western Darfur region, the UN has said.

Sudan's warring parties are in Switzerland for U.N.-led talks aimed at brokering possible local ceasefires to facilitate aid and protect civilians, but only one side showed up for the start of discussions on Thursday, the United Nations said.

War erupted in April last year between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over the integration of the forces in a transition to free elections.

Sudan’s war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has spawned one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

The conflict, which broke out in April last year, has forced around 9 million people to flee their homes and left the country on the brink of famine amid a warning by the United Nations that acts of genocide may be unfolding in the country.

A record-breaking 120 million people have been forced to flee their homes by war, violence and persecution – the 12th year in a row the number has increased, the UN refugee agency said.

The global displaced population is now equivalent to that of Japan, the agency said.

New conflicts in Sudan and Gaza contributed to the rise, which the UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi called a “terrible indictment on the state of the world”.

The number of people internally displaced in Sudan due to conflict could soon exceed 10 million, the United Nations migration agency said on Friday, in the world's largest displacement crisis.

Fighting broke out in the capital Khartoum in April 2023 and quickly spread across the country, reigniting ethnic bloodshed in the western Darfur region and forcing millions to flee.

Nearly five million people are close to famine as the country’s civil war passes the one-year mark. Aid officials say the warring parties – the army and the Rapid Support Forces – are looting aid or blocking it from reaching areas where starvation is taking hold. But ‘the world’s largest hunger crisis’ is drawing little global attention.

One of the world's most brutal conflicts is marking its first anniversary this week, but with the war in Gaza and other events dominating news, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan is going underreported.

Since renewed fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rebel paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15, 2023, more than 8 million people have fled their homes and more than 14,000 people have been killed, according to conflict monitor estimates.

In December, Osman Arbab*, 24, and his younger brother were on a bus just outside Atbara, Sudan, when military intelligence stopped it and asked which of the passengers were from Darfur or Kordofan.

The two men are originally from Kordofan, even though they have not lived there for years, and found themselves bundled up with all the other young men on the bus who were from the two places.

Sudanese paramilitaries and allied militias have seized control of cities in the western region of Darfur from the government army, with mass killings reported in one regional capital and at a camp for displaced families, eyewitnesses said.

The capture of the cities, previously divided between the militias and the army, is the most significant military breakthrough by the Rapid Support Forces since the war began seven months ago, and threatens to usher in a new chapter of violence by drawing in forces that have previously kept aloof from the fighting.

Back in May, Al Jazeera published a story about a Palestinian man named Adel Atallah. In 2007, Atallah left his native Gaza to escape the Israeli blockade, joining relatives who were living in Sudan, which has long had diplomatic relations with Palestine. He found a job in construction in the capital city of Khartoum, got married, and had five children. Atallah built, as he told Al Jazeera, “a stable life.”