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, June 20, 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) “shelled the building”, violating the 72-hour truce which expires on Wednesday at 6 a.m. local time (0400 GMT). . A source among the paramilitaries replied that an “army drone had bombed the building where the RSF troops were gathered, causing the fire and partial destruction of the intelligence headquarters”.
The conflict that broke out on April 15 between the army, commanded by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the FSR of General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo known as “Hemetti” 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 Al-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.
“Targeted, Identity-Based Attacks”
In an audio recording posted online on Tuesday, General Daglo denounced “a tribal conflict” in Al-Geneïna, 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 escalated, people live in constant fear of being targeted,” says 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, identity-based attacks “. For the UN, the violence committed in this region could constitute “crimes against humanity”.
The war has left at least “two million” internally displaced in 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”. Grandi pleaded on Tuesday for neighboring countries to “keep their borders open” despite their “security” fears, during an interview with AFP in Nairobi. “It’s a worrying situation with neighboring countries that are very fragile” and “insecurity that 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 needs humanitarian aid to survive, according to the UN.
Fear of epidemics
“Humanitarian needs have reached record levels with no signs of an end to the conflict,” Eddie Rowe, the 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 underlines.
General Daglo on Tuesday accused the army of “continued violations” of the ceasefire. In return, the army accused the RSF of “breaking the truce” and causing “fifteen civilian deaths and dozens of civilian injuries” 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 “fire” prevented the “transfer [to the army] of wounded soldiers” at the hands of the paramilitaries. The ICRC did not say where the shots came from. The arrival of the rainy season is raising fears of epidemics, the ICRC points out, recalling that many inhabitants are forced to drink unsafe water from the Nile or other sources.