The World Health Organization said it was assessing a new threat to public health after militants in Sudan seized a national laboratory holding samples of deadly diseases.
"We are concerned that those occupying the laboratory could be accidentally exposed to pathogens stored there," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva.
"WHO is seeking more information and conducting a risk assessment."
The nearly two weeks of civil fighting have killed hundreds, injured thousands and sparked a mass exodus of foreigners, while the UN has warned that a giant new refugee crisis could be brewing.
But the WHO appears to be seizing the situation for an additional threat of a new pandemic after it said militants had seized a national public laboratory in Khartoum, holding samples of diseases such as polio, measles and cholera.
On Tuesday, the WHO representative in Sudan, Nima Saeed Abid, told reporters that this had created an "extremely, extremely dangerous" situation.
"There is an enormous biohazard associated with occupying the central public health laboratory."
Olivier le Polain, WHO's incident manager for the Sudan response, told reporters that the agency was aware that there were samples stored in the laboratory of pathogens including measles, tuberculosis, cholera, polio and SARS CoV-2 , which causes the disease Covid-19.
"The assessment is ongoing to better understand what the public health threats might be with them, and of course, the risk of having untrained staff or untrained people in the lab," he said.
"We want to make sure that the people occupying the building are aware of the risks themselves and we will try to continue to communicate those risks."
He stressed, however, that "doing any kind of assessment right now ... is very difficult," noting that internet and phone lines are down and "communications are extremely difficult."
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