KHARTOUM: Bombing warplanes unleashed heavy anti-aircraft fire over Khartoum on Saturday as fierce fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitaries entered a third week, violating a renewed ceasefire.
“There is no right to keep fighting for power when the country is collapsing,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told Al Arabiya television.
Guterres lent his support to African-led mediation efforts.
“My call is that everything be done to support an African-led peace initiative in Sudan,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Saturday that Sudan was falling apart as fighting continued for a third week. (AFP)
The Sudanese Ministry of Health put the total number of dead, including fighters, at 528, with 4,500 injured.
Khartoum, a city of about 5 million people, has become a frontline in the conflict between General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s army, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who he leads the powerful known paramilitary group. such as Rapid Support Forces.
Tens of thousands have been uprooted within Sudan or embarked on arduous journeys to neighboring Chad, Egypt, South Sudan or Ethiopia to escape the fighting.
Truce violations
They have agreed to multiple truces, but none have been cemented as the civilian death toll continues to rise and chaos and lawlessness grip Khartoum, a city of five million people where many have been cloistered in their homes without food, water and electricity.
The latest three-day ceasefire, set to expire at midnight Sunday (2200 GMT), was agreed on Thursday after mediation led by the United States, Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the United Nations.
“We woke up once again to the sound of fighter jets and anti-aircraft guns firing all over our neighborhood,” a witness in southern Khartoum told AFP.
Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on patrol in the East Nile district of greater Khartoum on April 23, 2023, amid fighting in Sudan. (AFP)
Another said fighting had continued since early morning, particularly around the headquarters of the state broadcaster in the capital’s twin city of Omdurman.
Other witnesses reported exchanges of machine gun fire across the Blue Nile north of Khartoum, while the sound of gunfire rang out in Burri, east of the city.
As the battles erupted, the rival generals, who seized power in a coup in 2021, took aim at each other in the media, with Burhan branding the RSF a militia bent on “destroying Sudan” and Dagalo calling the army chief “a traitor”.
The Sudanese Ministry of Health put the total number of dead, including fighters, at 528, with 4,500 injured.
Khartoum, a city of about 5 million people, has become a frontline in the conflict between General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s army, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who he leads the powerful known paramilitary group. such as Rapid Support Forces.
About 75,000 have been displaced by the fighting in Khartoum and the states of Blue Nile, North Kordofan, as well as the western Darfur region, the UN said.
mass exodus
The clashes have also led to a mass exodus of foreigners and international staff.
On Saturday, a ferry carrying about 1,900 evacuees arrived at a Saudi naval base in Jeddah, after crossing the Red Sea from Port Sudan in the latest evacuation to the kingdom by sea.
Among the most recent evacuees were 65 Iranians.
Saudi Arabia has so far organized evacuations for nearly 4,880 people from 96 countries, the Saudi foreign ministry said.
Iranians and other nationals arrive at the Jeddah seaport on April 29, 2023, after being evacuated by Saudi Arabia from Sudan to escape violence. (REUTERS)
Merhdad Malekzadh, a 28-year-old Iranian who has lived in Khartoum since he was a child, said no one expected the fighting to be so intense and that his escape had also come as a surprise.
“Because of our nationality, we never imagined we would come to Saudi Arabia when we were evacuated,” said Malekzadh, whose family runs an oil lubricants business in the Sudanese capital.
“Fortunately, they helped us a lot. They put aside their differences and worked together. They saved lives,” he added, according to AFP.
Among those brought to Jeddah by boat on Saturday was a second group of Yemenis.
“The Kingdom worked to meet all the necessary needs of foreign nationals in preparation to facilitate their departures to their countries,” the Foreign Ministry said.
A US-organized convoy carrying US citizens, local personnel and nationals of allied countries arrived in Port Sudan on Saturday to join the exodus across the Red Sea, the State Department said.
And the UK Foreign Office said just under 1,900 Britons have been taken off 21 flights, including the last one due to leave on Saturday.
The World Food Program has said the violence could plunge millions more into hunger in a country where 15 million people, a third of the population, already need help to avoid starvation.
About 70 percent of hospitals in areas near the fighting have been put out of service and many have been shelled, the doctors’ union said.
People walk among scattered items in the market of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, where there is widespread looting, destruction and burning of property, as fighting continues in Sudan between the forces of two rival generals. (AFP)
“Horrible” violence in West Darfur
In West Darfur state, at least 96 people were reported killed in the town of El Geneina this week, the UN said.
“What is happening in Darfur is terrible, society is collapsing, we see tribes now trying to arm themselves,” Guterres said.
Former Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok warned that the conflict could deteriorate into one of the world’s worst civil wars if it was not stopped soon.
“God forbid that Sudan reaches a point of civil war proper…Syria, Yemen, Libya will be a small play,” Hamdok said at an event in Nairobi.
“I think it would be a nightmare for the world.”
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said there were reports of widespread looting, destruction and burning of property, including in camps for displaced people. He said even one of the hospitals he supported was ransacked.
MSF’s deputy director of operations in Sudan, Sylvain Perron, said the fighting had forced the agency to halt almost all of its activities in West Darfur.
Darfur is still scarred by a war that broke out in 2003 when then-hardline president Omar Al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia, mainly recruited from Arab pastoral tribes, against ethnic minority rebels.
The scorched earth campaign left at least 300,000 people dead and nearly 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures. Bashir was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court.
The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF, which was formally created in 2013.
The 2021 coup that brought Burhan and Daglo to power derailed the transition to elective civilian government that had begun after Bashir was ousted following mass protests in 2019.
Both generals later fell, most recently over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.
Blockade in the Gaza Strip
Palestinians hugged at the Egyptian border with the blockaded Gaza Strip as students returned home. The Gaza Border and Borders Authority said that “172 students reached the homeland through the Rafah border crossing.”
With ordinary Sudanese caught in the crossfire, the civilian death toll rose to 411 on Saturday, according to the Sudanese Doctors Union, which is monitoring the casualties.
In some areas in and around the capital, residents reported that shops were reopening and normalcy was gradually returning as the scale of fighting subsided after the shaky ceasefire. But in other areas, terrified residents reported explosions around them and fighters ransacking houses. Now in its third week, the fighting has injured 2,023 civilians, the union added, although the true toll is expected to be much higher.
