More than two months of war between army and paramilitaries have forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in Sudan, the UN announced on Tuesday, particularly in the Darfur region where bodies litter the streets.
On the last day of a generally respected truce in Khartoum since Sunday, a huge fire raged Tuesday evening at the intelligence headquarters in the capital.
A source within the army told AFP that the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “bombarded the building”, violating the 72-hour truce which expires on Wednesday at 0600 local time (0400 GMT).
A source among the paramilitaries replied that an “army drone had bombed the building where the FSR troops were gathered, causing the fire and the partial destruction of the intelligence headquarters”.
The conflict that broke out on April 15 between the army, commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the FSR of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo has killed more than 2,000 people in the country, according to the NGO Acled.
The violence is deadliest in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan bordering Chad.
In the city of El-Geneina alone, the capital of the state of West Darfur, 1,100 people were killed according to the UN. In the streets, corpses hastily covered in clothes lie under the scorching sun while the curtains of the shops are drawn down or have been ripped open by looters.
In an audio recording posted online on Tuesday, General Daglo denounced “a tribal conflict” in El-Geneina, claiming to have ordered his men “not to intervene” and accusing the army of “creating sedition by distributing weapons “to civilians.
With a few belongings under their arms, subjected to searches imposed by armed men, the inhabitants fled in long columns towards Chad, about twenty kilometers to the west, under the crossfire of soldiers, paramilitaries, tribal fighters and armed civilians. .
Since Friday, “15,000 Sudanese, including nearly 900 wounded” have fled to Adré, Chad, according to Doctors Without Borders. “The violence has intensified, people live in constant fear of being targeted,” said Konstantinos Psykakos, MSF project coordinator.
In Darfur, “the conflict now has an ethnic dimension”, warned the UN, the African Union and the East African bloc Igad, “with targeted attacks based on identity” . For the UN, the violence committed in this region could constitute “crimes against humanity”.
The war has left at least “two million” displaced inside Sudan, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, while the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has counted “550,000 people who fled to neighboring countries”.
Mr. Grandi called on Tuesday for neighboring countries to “keep their borders open” despite their “security” fears, during an interview with AFP in Nairobi.
“It is a worrying situation with neighboring countries which are very fragile” and “insecurity which is likely to spread”, he said.
According to the UN, more than 150,000 people have fled Darfur to Chad, one of the least developed countries on the planet.
Many Sudanese have also fled to South Sudan and Egypt.
On Monday, the international community, meeting in Geneva, pledged $1.5 billion in aid, only half of the needs put forward by humanitarian agencies.
More than half of Sudan’s population, 25 million people, now need humanitarian aid to survive, according to the UN.
“Humanitarian needs have reached record levels with no signs of an end to the conflict,” Eddie Rowe, director of the World Food Program (WFP) in Sudan, warned on Tuesday.
For Alexander Kjaerum of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the level of funding for humanitarian aid in Sudan “is shameful”. After so many days of war, “68% of the funds to respond to the Ukrainian crisis were met”, against only 50% of donations promised for Sudan, he said.
General Daglo on Tuesday accused the army of “continuing violations” of the ceasefire. In return, the army accused the RSF of having “broken the truce” and caused “15 civilian deaths and dozens of injured civilians” in Tawila, Darfur.
A medical source on site confirmed this assessment to AFP, reporting an “attack by the FSR”.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) denounced the “non-respect” of the ceasefire on Monday, when “shooting” prevented the “transfer (to the army) of wounded soldiers” in the hands of the paramilitaries. The ICRC did not say where the shots came from.
The onset of the rainy season is also raising fears of epidemics, the ICRC points out, recalling that many inhabitants are forced to drink unsanitary water from the Nile or other sources.
20/06/2023 20:50:24 – Khartoum (AFP) – © 2023 AFP