Air raids and fighting raged again Tuesday May 30 in Sudan, despite a new extension of the truce to try to deliver vital humanitarian aid to this country on the verge of famine. At war since April 15, the army of General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo said “Hemetti” agreed Monday evening to extend a five-day ceasefire. -fire theoretically in force since May 22.

But on the ground, the air raids, artillery fire and armored movements never ceased. On Tuesday, air raids and fighting continued late into the night in Khartoum and Darfur, a vast border region of Chad, residents told AFP. “There is no ceasefire in Sudan,” says researcher Rashid Abdi of the Rift Valley Institute. “There is a huge gap between the reality on the ground in Sudan and the diplomacy in Jeddah,” in Saudi Arabia, where US and Saudi mediators brokered a truce with envoys from both sides, he writes.

The war has already claimed more than 1,800 lives, according to the NGO Acled, and nearly one and a half million displaced persons and refugees according to the UN. “Looting has become commonplace in Khartoum, with neighborhoods completely raked,” said a humanitarian from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). And the two belligerents do not seem to want to silence the guns. “The army is ready to fight until victory,” General Al-Burhan said while visiting his troops in Khartoum on Tuesday. The FSR say they continue to exercise “their right to defend themselves” in the face of “violations of the truce by the army”.

Almost seven weeks of war

Sudan was already before the war one of the poorest countries in the world. One in three residents suffered from hunger, long power cuts were a daily occurrence and the health system was on the verge of collapse. After nearly seven weeks of war, 25 of the 45 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid to survive, according to the UN. Among them, more than 13.6 million children, UNICEF points out, including “620,000 in a state of acute malnutrition, half of whom could die if they are not helped in time”.

Three quarters of the hospitals in the combat zones are out of order, the others have almost no more equipment or medicines. So far, aid workers have only been able to deliver small quantities of food or medicine because their workers cannot travel and their shipments are blocked at customs.

“The food aid distributed weeks ago was only enough for a few days” in Madani, a town south of Khartoum that hosts the capital’s displaced, said NRC’s Ahmed Omer, describing those “sleeping on the ground , sick children, pregnant women and the elderly in need of life-saving care”.

In Darfur, some regions are cut off from the world, without electricity, Internet or telephone and activists say they fear the worst while refugees in Chad recount the killings and fires caused by the fighting. If Ryad and Washington regularly welcome a drop in violence, others are already considering a long war and long-term destruction. The Haggar group, a heavyweight in the agricultural sector and the country’s largest employer, has announced that it will suspend its activities and investments in the country.

The fear of “an all-out civil war”

Many Sudanese now fear “an all-out civil war”, according to the Forces of Freedom and Change (FLC), the civilian bloc ousted from power in the 2021 putsch led by the two generals, then allies and now at war. . Calls to arm civilians are increasing.

In Darfur, already ravaged in the 2000s by a deadly war, local militias, tribal fighters and armed civilians have joined the fighting. Governor Minni Minnawi, a former rebel leader now close to the army, on Sunday called on people to take up arms “to protect their property”.

“We have to arm ourselves, because everyone is in danger”, pleads Aboubaker Ismaïl, a resident of the region, speaking of attacks against inhabitants in their homes or looting. But, retorts Mohammed Hassan, a resident of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, calling on civilians to arm themselves is “completely irresponsible: it is a very dangerous call that can lead us to civil war”.

Chad, South Sudan or Ethiopia, neighboring states themselves in the grip of violence, fear a contagion and demand aid from the UN which, in return, repeats having received only a tiny part funds from its donors. And in a few days, the rainy season will begin and with it the fear of epidemics of malaria or cholera.