More than 1,200 children under age 5 have died in nine camps in war-scarred Sudan in the past five months, because of a deadly combination of measles and malnutrition, the U.N.’s refugee agency said Tuesday.

Ukrainian special services were likely behind a series of drone strikes and a ground operation directed against a Wagner-backed militia near Sudan’s capital, a CNN investigation has found, raising the prospect that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spread far from the frontlines.

Speaking to CNN, a Ukrainian military source described the operation as the work of a “non-Sudanese military.” Pressed on whether Kyiv was behind the attacks, the source would only say that “Ukrainian special services were likely responsible.”

More than 1 million people have fled Sudan to neighbouring states and people inside the country are running out of food and dying due to lack of healthcare after four months of war, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.

Fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has devastated the capital Khartoum and sparked ethnically driven attacks in Darfur, threatening to plunge Sudan into a protracted civil war and destabilise the region.

Estimates that about a million people might flee Sudan by October may be conservative and conflict there risks increasing people trafficking and spreading weapons across a fragile region, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Monday.

More than 350,000 people have already fled across Sudan's borders since war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted on April 15, with most heading to Egypt, Chad and South Sudan.

Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, is a war zone. “Things get worse every day and day,” said Mohamed Fath Alrahman, a doctor and general manager of Al-Nada Hospital in Khartoum.

Artillery shelling and airstrikes are the norm. The streets are not safe. There are food shortages. The health care system is collapsing. About 16 percent of hospitals in Khartoum are still functioning, according to the World Health Organization.

Sounds of fighting and artillery shooting could be heard in several parts of Sudan on Monday as talks between warring sides were underway in Saudi Arabia amid hopes it will to bring a short-term ceasefire.

Witnesses reported renewed clashes in east and central Khartoum and in the adjoining cities of Bahari and Omdurman. Airstrikes hit parts of Khartoum as dark smoke rose in the sky, residents said.

The American Embassy in Sudan is closed. Fierce fighting between two warring generals led to the swift deterioration of conditions in the capital and the U.S. evacuated seventy-two American embassy staff, alongside six Canadian diplomats and a few others, by military air. Some days later a convoy of 300 private American citizens was organized. What happens when an embassy is evacuated? What happens to private Americans in-country?

Armed drones escorted hundreds of Americans as they began their escape from war-torn Sudan on Saturday amid fierce fighting between the military and a rival paramilitary group.

The unmmaned aerial vehicles flew above a convoy of buses as they made the 500 mile journey from the large African nation’s capital Khartoum to Port Sudan on the country's west coast, a U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News. Several hundred Americans were on board at least a dozen buses, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.