The fighting entered its second week on Saturday (April 22) in Sudan where violent clashes between the regular army and paramilitaries left hundreds dead and thousands injured. During the night, the strong explosions which had rocked the capital Khartoum in recent days decreased, but the exchange of fire resumed in the morning, according to witnesses.
Violence erupted on April 15 between the army of General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhane, Sudan’s de facto ruler since the 2021 putsch, and his deputy turned rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces ( FSR), feared paramilitaries. The two generals had seized power in the coup, but then clashed in a bitter power struggle.
According to several sources at CNN, the Russian paramilitary group Wagner is supplying missiles to General Daglo’s troops. Satellite images, analyzed by the American channel and the international investigative collective All Eyes on Wagner, show that a Russian transport plane has made several round trips in recent days between two bases in neighboring Libya, used by the Wagner Group . These displacements began two days before the start of the conflict in Sudan last Saturday and continued until at least Wednesday, according to the images.
On April 13, the plane flew from Khadim Air Base in Libya to the coastal city of Latakia in Syria, where Moscow has a major base. The next day, he made the return trip. Then on Saturday, he left for another Wagner base in Libya, that of Al-Djoufra. The plane then returned to Latakia on Tuesday, before heading again to Khadim and then Al-Djoufra. On that day, Russia allegedly dropped missiles on paramilitary positions in northwestern Sudan, according to regional and Sudanese sources at CNN.
Evacuation of foreign nationals under consideration
The army announced on Friday that it had “agreed to a three-day ceasefire” for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the holy month of Muslim fasting. General Daglo said in a statement that he had “discussed the current crisis” with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, including a “humanitarian truce, safe passages and the protection of workers humanitarians”. The two previous 24-hour ceasefires announced earlier this week were also ignored.
Created in 2013, General Daglo’s FSR brings together thousands of former janjawids, Arab militiamen recruited by ex-dictator Omar Al-Bashir, ousted in 2019, to fight ethnic minorities in Darfur. In Khartoum, a city of five million people, the conflict has turned the lives of terrified residents upside down, who have taken refuge inside their homes without electricity, in the scorching heat. Civilians ventured outside only to obtain emergency food or to flee the city.
The end of the month of Ramadan is usually celebrated “with sweets and pastries, with happy children, and people greeting their loved ones”, said a resident of the capital. But instead, there were “gunshots and the stench of blood all around us,” he added. Khartoum has seen some of the fiercest fighting, with airstrikes, tanks in the streets and gunfire in densely populated neighborhoods, but violence has exploded across the country.
The fighting raged especially in Darfur, one of the poorest regions of Sudan, where “the situation is catastrophic”, according to a doctor from Doctors Without Borders. Evacuation plans for foreign nationals in Sudan are being drawn up: the United States, South Korea and Japan have deployed forces to neighboring countries, and the European Union is considering taking similar steps.
More than 400 dead and 3,500 injured, according to WHO
On Friday, the US State Department said the situation was still too risky to allow the evacuation of embassy staff. Immediately, General Daglo’s FSRs – very active on social networks – replied that they were “ready to open all airports in Sudan” so that “friendly countries wishing to evacuate their nationals” could do so.
A report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) reports 413 dead and 3,551 injured in the fighting. The violence could push millions more into hunger in Sudan, where 15 million people, or a third of the population, need aid, according to the World Food Programme.
Analysts fear that the countries of the region will be drawn into the conflict. Urgent action is needed to prevent it escalating into a “full-fledged civil war”, the International Crisis Group has warned. The dispute between Generals Al-Burhane and Daglo centers on the planned integration of Sudanese security forces into the regular army, a key condition for reaching an agreement aimed at restoring democratic transition in the country.