(Wad Madani) Airstrikes targeted Khartoum on Sunday and fighting rages in the Darfur region (west), as the war between the army and paramilitaries in Sudan enters its fourth month, with no sign of abating .
In the capital, army fighter jets “targeted bases” belonging to the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), who “retaliated with anti-aircraft weapons”, witnesses told AFP .
A local civil resistance formation claimed that one of these strikes left five dead and 17 wounded, without specifying the origin of the fire.
Residents reported that RSF drones had targeted Khartoum’s largest hospital, the day after a similar attack on the same establishment killed five people and injured 22, according to the army.
Since mid-April, fighting between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s FSR has left at least 3,000 dead and more than 3 million displaced.
In Darfur, a vast region already scarred in the 2000s by a civil war, witnesses reported on Sunday “violent clashes with several types of weapons” in the town of Kas, some 80 km northwest of the capital of South Darfur, Nyala.
Residents of Kas claimed paramilitaries had looted houses, while in a statement the paramilitaries hailed their “victory” in Kas.
Fighting in Darfur
The RSF on Sunday “welcomed” the decision of a police force from East Darfu to join their ranks, while tribal leaders from South Darfur also pledged allegiance to the RSF.
The Sudanese Interior Ministry, for its part, said in a statement on Sunday that the police remain “the strongest support of the armed forces” in Khartoum and “praised the efforts of the police” in the rest of the country.
On Saturday, the FSR “categorically” refuted a recent report by the NGO Human Rights Watch on the summary execution of “at least 28 members of the Massalit ethnic group” – a non-Arab minority group – and the “total destruction of the town of Misterei”, in West Darfur.
Attributing this violence to a “long-standing tribal conflict”, the paramilitaries said they “respect international humanitarian law”.
Several sources have reported massacres of civilians and ethnically motivated killings in Darfur attributed to paramilitaries and allied Arab militias.
In the early 2000s, General Daglo, then head of the Janjawid Arab militiamen, carried out a scorched earth policy against ethnic minorities in Darfur on the orders of former dictator Omar al-Bashir.
The war killed around 300,000 people there, according to the UN, and the Janjawid officially gave birth to the FSR in 2013.
The atrocities of the time earned Mr. Bashir to be charged by the International Criminal Court, in particular for genocide.
The court’s attorney general has launched a new investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the current fighting, particularly sexual violence and the targeting of civilians because of their ethnicity.
Resumption of negotiations?
Several ceasefires – systematically violated as soon as they come into effect – have been concluded in recent months under the aegis of the United States and Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi and American mediators adjourned the negotiations in June.
On Saturday, a government source told AFP that a “delegation of the armed forces” had returned to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, “to resume negotiations with the rebels of the Rapid Support Forces”.
The FRS did not comment on the possible resumption of negotiations.
According to the UN, the conflict has already left more than 2.4 million internally displaced and another 740,000 people have fled to countries neighboring Sudan, many of whom are themselves facing economic crises or to political instability.
The seven neighboring countries of Sudan met Thursday in Cairo to claim aid from international donors, calling on the international community to “keep its promises”.