The deadly fighting between paramilitaries and the army entered its thirteenth day on Thursday in Sudan, where the capital Khartoum and the Darfur region are now in the grip of the chaos of bombs, the belligerents ignoring the truce.
Military planes flew over the northern suburbs of Khartoum where the troops of the two generals in the war for power exchanged machine gun and heavy weapon fire, witnesses told AFP.
Before the expiry at midnight (2200 GMT) of a 72-hour truce, the army announced on Wednesday evening that it had agreed to send a representative to Juba, the capital of neighboring South Sudan, for talks with the paramilitaries ” at the initiative of IGAD”, a regional bloc in East Africa, to discuss an extension of the largely disrespected truce. The paramilitaries did not comment on this regional initiative.
Numerous attempts to silence the guns have failed since the conflict began on April 15 between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and the much-feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, says “Hemedti”.
In Darfur, the most affected region with the capital, violence is intensifying, particularly in the city of El-Geneina, capital of West Darfur.
“Hospitals, public buildings and health centers have been severely damaged there and there is looting on every street corner,” a resident of El-Geneina told AFP on Thursday.
Looting, murders and burning of houses took place in this border region of Chad and theater in the 2000s of a particularly bloody war, confirms the UN.
According to the Sudanese Ministry of Health, at least 512 people have been killed and 4,193 injured since the start of the conflict, but the toll is likely much higher.
The situation in Khartoum is “extremely bad”, Chaaban, a Syrian national, told AFP while awaiting his evacuation from Port Sudan: “We just want to go safely to Jeddah (in Saudi Arabia) or Syria. We want just leave Sudan”.
“Violence, the interruption of the functioning of many hospitals and dispensaries, limited access to drinking water, food shortages and the forced displacement of populations” constitute “the greatest risks for health in Sudan” alert of its side of the World Health Organization (WHO).
In Darfur, 50,000 children “suffering from acute malnutrition” are deprived of food aid, warn the United Nations, which has interrupted its activities after the death of five humanitarian workers.
The fighting has caused a mass exodus in this country of 45 million inhabitants, one of the poorest in the world.
Those left in Sudan have to contend with shortages of food, water and electricity as well as internet and phone line cuts.
Several tens of thousands of people have already arrived in border countries, notably Egypt in the north and Ethiopia in the east, according to the UN. And, in total, 270,000 people could flee to Chad and South Sudan.
In recent days, several countries have organized evacuations. France announced on Thursday that it had evacuated another nearly 400 people of different nationalities, China said it had already repatriated 1,300 of its nationals on board warships, and the United Kingdom called on its nationals to “leave now”.
So far, 14 hospitals have been bombed, according to the doctors’ union, and 19 others have been forcibly evacuated because of gunfire, lack of equipment and personnel or because fighters had taken up residence there.
In the general chaos, hundreds of detainees escaped from three prisons, in particular the high security establishment of Kober, which hosted the inner circle of the former dictator Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC ) for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Darfur.
Detained in a military hospital because of his state of health, according to the army, Mr. Bashir, aged 79, was sacked by the army in April 2019 under the pressure of a major popular uprising.
Doubling the hopes of a democratic transition, the two generals had together ousted civilians from power in 2021, before going to war, failing to agree on the integration of paramilitaries into the army.
27/04/2023 15:46:30 – Khartoum (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
