Shots and jerks. Fighting echoes in Khartoum on the evening of Monday May 22 despite the official entry into force of the one-week truce between the army and the paramilitaries supposed to allow civilians and humanitarian aid to pass into Sudan.

Since April 15, the war between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR) has left a thousand dead and more than a million displaced and refugees. .

The fighting usually wanes at night, but on Monday evening, after the truce officially came into effect at 9:45 p.m., residents of the northeastern suburbs of Khartoum reported clashes to Agence France-Presse. And in the south of the Sudanese capital, residents said they “heard airstrikes after the scheduled time of the truce”.

For the 37th consecutive day, the inhabitants of Khartoum are suffering from incessant fighting, under overwhelming heat, most of them without water, electricity and telecommunications. The UN noted late afternoon “fighting and troop movements as both sides pledged not to seek military advantage before the truce comes into effect.”

25 of the 45 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid

To revive services and hospitals and replenish humanitarian stocks and looted or bombed markets, the American and Saudi mediators announced that they had obtained, after two weeks of negotiations, a one-week truce.

Both sides have announced that they want to respect it, but in Khartoum, residents have said they see no preparation. “We see no sign that the RSF, who are still occupying the streets, are preparing to leave them”, reported during the day, Mahmoud Salaheddine, a resident of Khartoum.

If the army controls the air, it has few men in the center of the capital, while the RSF occupy the ground in Khartoum. Many residents accuse them of looting their homes or setting up headquarters there. A dozen ceasefires have already been promised and immediately violated in the East African country, one of the poorest in the world.

Despite everything, Khaled Saleh, in the suburbs of Khartoum, wants to believe it. “With a ceasefire, running water can be restored and I can finally see a doctor for my diabetes and hypertension,” he told AFP.

Othman al-Zein, a trader in Darfur, the western region of the country worst hit by fighting with the capital, also hopes to find a way out. “If the truce holds everywhere in Sudan, which I doubt, I will leave Nyala”, in South Darfur, he told AFP, “to take shelter and save my savings”. Because, in addition to stray bullets, the Sudanese fear looting.

While 25 million of the 45 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid, according to the UN, food is becoming increasingly scarce, banks are closed and most agri-food factories have been destroyed or looted. “We are all hungry, the children, the old, everyone is suffering from the war. We have no more water,” Souad al-Fateh, a resident of Khartoum, told AFP. “We really need both sides to come to an agreement. »

Risk of contagion of violence

Frightened and hungry, thousands of Sudanese or refugees in Sudan leave the country every day. Their number in Chad is “increasing very quickly” and is around 90,000, the UN was alarmed on Monday, which counted 76,000 three days earlier. If the conflict continues, a million more Sudanese could flee to neighboring countries which fear a contagion of violence.

Doctors continue to warn of the dramatic fate of hospitals: in Khartoum, as in Darfur, they are almost all out of order. Those that have not been bombed have no more stocks or are occupied by belligerents.

Humanitarians are calling for safe corridors and this time, Riyadh and Washington assure, there will be “a ceasefire monitoring mechanism” bringing together representatives from both sides as well as the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Before the Security Council in New York, the representative of Sudan to the UN, loyal to General Burhane, accused the FSR of all the abuses recorded since April 15. General Daglo referred his accusations to the army in an audio recording posted online. In it, he calls on his men to fight “until victory or martyrdom”.

The UN envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was “taken by surprise” by the fighting, even though the two generals were supposed to meet to discuss democratic transition.

In 2021, they led a putsch together, interrupting the democratic transition launched after 30 years of Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship.

The two men then divided on the question of the integration of the FSR into the regular army. On Friday, General Burhane sacked General Daglo as number two in military power, replacing him with Malik Agar. This former rebel who had signed peace with Khartoum in 2020 met Monday in Juba the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, traditional mediator of conflicts in Sudan.