ADDIS ABABA, March 2 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations' sexual and reproductive health agency, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) on Monday evening disclosed it has recorded six COVID-19 related cases and one COVID-19 related death in Ethiopian refugee camps in Sudan.

In a situation report it published on Monday evening, the UNFPA said in addition to several COVID-19 cases, all Ethiopian refugee camps in Sudan have had outbreaks of communicable disease.

"Across all refugee sites, acute respiratory infections, malaria and dysentery among the most common diseases affecting Ethiopian refugees in Sudan," the UNFPA said.

The UN said 61,307 Ethiopians have so far fled to neighboring Sudan, fleeing fighting in the country's northern Tigray regional state.

Nearly four months of fighting in northern Ethiopia's Tigray regional state between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) which used to rule the region until November and the Ethiopian Defense Forces has left thousands dead, hundreds of thousands displaced and millions in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, media reported.

Separately, several thousand Ethiopians have fled from the country's western Benishangul- Gumuz regional state to Sudan, fleeing escalating communal violence.

In recent months, deadly inter-communal violence in the Metekel zone of Benishangul-Gumuz regional state has killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than 100,000 others.

The violence is mainly over access to power and land resources.

Benishangul-Gumuz regional state, located along the Ethiopia-Sudan border, hosts Ethiopia's largest development project, the 5,150 Megawatts (MW) the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is under construction on the Blue Nile River with a construction cost of close to 5 billion U.S. dollars. Enditem

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