New Delhi, May 15 -- More than 40% of the population in war-torn Sudan are facing high levels of acute food insecurity through May as the conflict enters its fourth year, a global hunger monitoring group said Thursday.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said in a new assessment that of the nearly 19.5 million people facing this level of food insecurity, 135,000 people were in Phase 5, which is characterized by "extreme food gaps, starvation, very high levels of malnutrition, and death due to disease or acute malnutrition."

"Conditions are expected to deteriorate further in the upcoming June-September lean season," the IPC assessment statement read. It warned that an estimated 825,000 children under 5 years old ar...