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(KHARTOUM, Sudan) — Dead bodies lined the streets of the Sudan capital of Khartoum, as intense fighting between the Sudanese military and Rapid Support Forces continued for a sixth day. The fighting has caused thousands in Khartoum and across the country to shelter in place with limited food, electricity and water, as an all-out war rages in the streets.

So far, at least 330 people have been killed and 3,200 have been injured from the fighting, according to the World Health Organization, but these numbers are likely an “underestimation of the true impact of the crisis,” WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed Al-Mandhari said Thursday at a press conference.

A U.S. citizen is confirmed to be among the dead in Sudan’s ongoing conflict, a State Department spokesperson said Thursday.

One-third of the health facilities in Sudan are out of service, WHO representative in Sudan, Nima Saeed Abid said Thursday.

“20 hospitals have been forced to close due to attacks or lack of resources, and another eight health facilities are at risk of closure due to staff exhaustion or lack of medical staff and supplies,” Al-Mandhari said.

Since the fighting began, nine hospitals have been hit by artillery and 19 have been forced to evacuate, the Sudanese Doctors Union said Thursday. Multiple aid organizations said they have received reports from workers on the ground being assaulted and deliberately targeted.

Two unsuccessful ceasefires called earlier this week left those who were injured and in need, stranded in place without resources. The ceasefires were called to allow injured people to get to hospitals and allow aid organizations to provide needed support, but calm never came to the capital or in other parts of the country.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for a three-day ceasefire over the Eid al-Fitr celebrations “to allow citizens trapped in conflict zones to escape and seek medical treatment,” on Thursday.

The cessation of hostilities must be followed by a “serious dialogue allowing for the successful transition, starting with the appointment of a civilian government,” Guterres said.

“The fighting must stop immediately,” he added.

The head of the Transitional Sovereignty Council in Sudan, Army Commander Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan said there is “no room” for talking with the Rapid Support Forces in a televised interview with Al-Jazeera on Thursday after Guterres called for a three-day ceasefire.

In the capital, residents saw bodies from both sides of the conflict lining the streets.

“Dead bodies were lying all around the ground in a main street in Al-Taif and on the western road outside of Khartoum,” Hadeel Mohamed, a resident of Khartoum’s Al-Taif district, told ABC News.

Al-Taif is about five miles from the main battlefront around the military headquarters in Khartoum. Mohamed fled to her family’s house in the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday.

“Everyone was staying home. No one could move,” Mohamed said of the situation in Khartoum. “No one wanted to dare move. We had supplies of food, but people who started running out of supplies would walk out to try to find stores to get food.”

Mohamed and Mosdalefa, a resident of the Jabra neighborhood in west Khartoum, said most stores and banks are closed in the capital city, making it hard for residents who do venture out for more supplies to find anything.

“I went to the supermarket today and didn’t find most of the things I needed,” Mosdalefa told ABC News. “The shop owner said suppliers have since Saturday stopped providing dairy, chicken and other products because of the poor security situation.”

At least nine children have been killed in Khartoum and more than 50 children have been injured, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement Thursday.

The fighting has “already disrupted life-saving care for an estimated 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children,” Russell said.

The UN World Food Programme estimated the conflict has the “potential to plunge millions more into hunger,” in a statement released Thursday. The UN WFP was “forced” to temporarily halt operations in Sudan because of the fighting.

For people who are brave enough to leave amid the fighting, the options are to leave on foot or in cars. The airspace over Sudan is closed.

An estimated 10,000 to 20,000 refugees have arrived in Chad in the past two days fleeing the conflict in Sudan, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a release Thursday.

“The majority of those arriving are women and children who are currently sheltering out in the open,” UNHCR said in the release.

In the meantime, the fighting continues without any sign of letting up.

Mohamed described the fighting in the capital as “militias fighting each other,” because “the military is acting like a militia,” she said.

“There was no ceasefire,” Mohamed said. “They both never stopped firing.”

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(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea’s presidential office confirmed that the ongoing machine gun bullets, battle tank shell, and reactive armor exports deal to Poland will continue as planned amid controversy after President Yoon Suk Yeol signaled his intentions to send weapons directly to Ukraine if a large-scale attack on civilians is carried out by Russia.

President Yoon’s comments were strongly criticized by Russian officials saying “such actions would definitely ruin Russian-Korean relations.”

In Yoon’s interview with Reuters, he said that if there were to be a large-scale attack on Ukrainian civilians, a massacre or a serious violation of the laws of war by Russia, that it might be difficult for South Korea to insist only on humanitarian or financial support.

The presidential office immediately clarified that President Yoon was merely referring to a “hypothetical situation” and explained to reporters “what South Korea does in the future will depend on Russia’s action.”

President Yoon is expected to meet President Joe Biden at the White House for his second bilateral summit next week and the two leaders are expected to “discuss a shared vision of a strong and deeply integrated U.S.-ROK Alliance that maintains peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” the White House announced on Wednesday.

South Korean companies have begun to wade into the global arms market to fill the gap in the international arms shortage. Last year, South Korea’s arms exports rose to a record $17.3 billion and Hanwha Aerospace, the largest defense company in South Korea, accounts for more than half of overseas arms exports in the country, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

In the case of Poland, South Korea currently exports tanks, fighter jets, howitzers and multiple rocket launchers as Poland has been sending its conventional weapons to Ukraine.

The arms exported to Poland include 180 K2 main battle tanks by Hyundai Rotem and Hanwha Aerospace’s 672 K9 A1 self-propelled howitzers. The first 24 of Hanwha’s howitzers were delivered to Poland’s soil last December while the company looks for ways to manufacture a portion of their product in Poland as well.

“We have 10 K2 tanks and 24 K9 howitzers on Polish soil. I emphasize that this is only the first batch of equipment that is to be delivered to Poland. There will be more deliveries next year,” Mariusz Błaszczak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense said during the collection of equipment from South Korea last December.

It took less than half a year for Hanwha Aerospace to land an export deal and deliver the product to Poland — an unprecedented speed in signing and executing an arms contract since it is a process that normally takes four to five years. For Hanwha, it was the largest order from overseas.

“The Ukrainian war is draining inventory of conventional weapons, such as self-propelled guns, missiles, and shells, which are most commonly used in actual war. Since major weapons-producing countries like the U.S. and Germany have reduced production lines for conventional weapons, it will take years to meet the demand, but South Korea was ready,” Chae Woo-suk, the president of the Korea Defense Industry Association, told ABC News. “Poland imported new weapons to defend themselves from South Korea to cover the short supply after they have exhausted a lot of old existing weapons supporting the Ukrainian war.”

A subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, Hanwha Aerospace provides most howitzers and fighting vehicles for the country’s military. As one of the few countries in the world that is technically still at war, South Korea’s arsenal companies have been maintaining and upgrading the conventional weapons production to equip the more than 3.6 million army personnel.

Despite playing second fiddle in the arsenal industry to companies in the West, South Korean companies like Hanwha have a comparative advantage in their production capabilities. Hanwha explained their biggest advantage is that they can meet the demands in a shorter period of time because they are relatively free from the global logistics disturbance when assembling their howitzers and war vehicles. For instance, 92% of Hanwha’s K9 howitzer parts are manufactured within South Korea.

“Our strong local manufacturing ecosystem has enabled us to be a key player providing high-quality weapon systems like our artillery and armored vehicles. And localization rate reaches over 80%,” Dae-young Kim, Executive Vice President of Hanwha Aerospace told ABC News. “Many thought that conventional weapons like battle tanks and artillery systems do not necessarily belong to the battle environment in the 21st century. But as seen in the Ukraine war, the artillery capabilities still play an essential role, and Hanwha Aerospace has strength in providing them.”

Hanwha’s export deal with Poland has expanded its production line in Changwon and around 50 more workers were committed to the K9 Howitzer production in March to increase production capacity to meet export demand.

“It takes approximately 100 days to complete one K9 howitzer-starting from laying the foundation plate and running a road test,” production manager Cha Yong-su at Hanwha Aerospace Changwon manufacturing plant, told ABC News. “Skilled workers as well as the automated robots who enable the hectic schedule.”

The South Korean government has reiterated its official position that they will not send Ukraine any direct lethal aid in the midst of the current controversy.

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(NEW YORK) — Sea level rise is likely presenting more threats to an already vulnerable marine species, according to new research.

As waters from the ocean push further and further onto shore, the flooding is washing away the nesting sites for sea turtles in places like the United States, Australia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.

Researchers estimated the probability of flooding under moderate and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios could impact 2,835 sea turtle nest locations within seven breeding grounds between 2010 and 2100. They found that under a moderate emissions scenario, breeding grounds located on flat beaches were most vulnerable to flooding — with 100% likelihood of flooding of nests in Raine Island, Australia; Saona Island, Dominican Republic; St George Island, Florida; and Mondonguillo beach, Costa Rica, according to the study.

Flooding of nests in some those areas are expected by 2050, the researchers said.

Nests in Raine Island and Saona Island will likely be “completely vanished” in the next several decades, Marga Rivas, a biodiversity and nature conservation researcher at the University of Cadiz in Spain and author of the study, told ABC News.

In Sint Eustatius, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, 50% of leatherback, 18% of hawksbill and 13% of green turtle nest locations could be vulnerable to flooding by 2050.

Within breeding grounds used by multiple turtle species, leatherback turtle nests may be particularly vulnerable to flooding due to their tendency to nest in open areas near the high tide line, according to the study. Hawksbill and green turtles tend to nest at higher elevations closer to dunes and steep cliffs, the researchers said.

As female sea turtles return to nest on the same beaches they hatched on, sea level rises could lead to many turtles nesting on flooded beaches, which could negatively impact the number of turtles hatching, according to the study.

Coastlines in places like Costa Rica and South America have been shrinking significantly in the last several years, Rivas said. The fact that turtle nests will likely disappear in alarming rates on several islands so far away from one another prove how widespread and dangerous the threat is, she said.

Rivas also warned against relocating turtle nests to higher ground because without temperature control, this well-meaning action could cause skewing sex ratios — causing all of the eggs that hatch to be females. The temperature of the developing eggs determines whether the offspring will be male or female.

“They put it anywhere, and they are producing 100% of females in those places,” Rivas said.

Sea level rise is adding to the severe threat sea turtles already face by overfishing and plastic ingestion, Rivas said.

“We need to help protect their nesting population because without those, with the high mortality they’re suffering, it’s impossible to to keep their species for the future,” Rivas said.

Loggerhead turtles are listed as vulnerable and multiple subspecies of leatherback turtles are listed as critical on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

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