Clashes raged on Sunday in Sudan for the second consecutive day, and neither the army nor the powerful paramilitary force of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo managed to prevail despite fighting that killed around 60 civilians, including three humanitarian workers from the UN.
The two parties have announced that they accept the UN’s request to open “humanitarian corridors” for three hours in the afternoon, without the sounds of explosions and gunfire stopping in Khartoum. Doctors who have been calling for the wounded to pass since Saturday morning have not reported any mass arrivals of wounded so far during this window which closed at 5:00 p.m. GMT.
Heavy gun battles are still raging on Sunday in Khartoum and its suburbs between the regular army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), former militiamen from the war of Darfur became army auxiliaries before trying to dislodge it from power since Saturday.
Since Saturday, air raids shaking buildings, artillery fire, street battles with automatic rifles or heavy machine guns have left no respite for the inhabitants of Khartoum deprived of water and electricity. The fighting is concentrated in the capital and in Darfur, in the west.
A network of pro-democracy doctors has identified 56 civilians as well as “dozens” of fighters killed, and more than 600 people injured.
The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has suspended aid to Sudan after three of its staff were killed in fighting in Darfur. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for those responsible to be “brought to justice as soon as possible”.
In Khartoum, bathed in the smell of gunpowder, street fighting and armored vehicles across the roads prevent any movement. Many armed men in fatigues roam the streets, while civilians hole up in their homes for another night that promises to be long and anxiety-provoking.
In the city center where the political and military institutions sit, rise columns of thick black smoke.
“It’s very worrying, it doesn’t look like it’s going to calm down quickly,” said Ahmed Seif, who lives with his wife and three children in eastern Khartoum.
He fears that his building has been hit by gunfire, but says he is “afraid to go out to check”, for fear of stray bullets and men in fatigues who criss-cross the streets.
Witnesses also reported artillery fire in Kassala, in the east.
Latent tensions
The conflict had been simmering for weeks, preventing any political settlement in one of the poorest countries in the world. Since the popular revolt that overthrew Omar al-Bashir in 2019, Sudan has been trying to organize its first free elections after 30 years of dictatorship.
During the putsch that ended the democratic transition in October 2021, General Burhane and General Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, had joined forces to oust civilians from power.
But their rivalry exploded on Saturday.
The international community has since multiplied calls for a ceasefire. The Arab League and the African Union met urgently.
In Cairo, Arab countries agreed to condemn the violence and call for a “political solution” – an option that has so far failed to lead to a return to democratic transition in Sudan, which emerged only in 2019 from thirty years of Islamic-military dictatorship.
The African Union, for its part, announced that it would dispatch the president of its Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, to the scene and that the latter would go “immediately” to Sudan “to commit the parties to a ceasefire”. . The airport is closed as well as several borders, in particular with Chad.
From the United Arab Emirates, former civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, arrested by General Burhane during the October 2021 putsch, called for “preventing any foreign interference” in Sudan, a country, he recalled, already plunged into the political and economic slump.
Who is holding what?
It was impossible on Sunday to know which force controlled what. The FSR announced that they had taken the airport on Saturday, but the army denied it.
The FSR also said to hold the presidential palace. The army has denied and above all claims to hold the HQ of its staff, one of the main power complexes in Khartoum.
As for television, the two parties also claim to have taken it. In the surroundings, residents report continuous fighting while on the air, only patriotic songs are broadcast, as during the putsch.
Because the open war between the generals is also media: Saturday, Hemedti chained the interviews to the television channels of the Gulf, of which several States are its allies, multiplying the insults against General Burhane, remained invisible so far.
Hemedti has continued to demand the departure of “Burhane the criminal”, while the army published on Facebook a “wanted notice” against Hemedti, “criminal on the run”.
Antonio Guterres called the two men to demand “an immediate end to the violence”. He urged the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, a big influential neighbor, to act when since Saturday Cairo has been worried about a video showing several of its soldiers apparently in the hands of RSF men.