(Wad Madani) The “technical” crash of a plane killed nine people on Sunday evening in Sudan where residents are calling for food donations to survive in this East African country ravaged for more than three months by a bloody war between the army and the paramilitaries.
Due to the incessant fighting, particularly in the capital Khartoum, millions of inhabitants find themselves stranded at home and, for some, deprived of water, particularly in the suburbs of Khartoum-Nord. They only have intermittent electricity and almost no food, locals report.
To help them, a neighborhood committee in Khartoum on Sunday issued an “urgent appeal” to the population: “We must support each other, give food and money to those around us”, wrote the al-Danaqla committee.
Abbas Mohammed Babiker, a resident of Khartoum North, told AFP that his family had to limit themselves to one meal a day. “And we only have enough left to last two days,” he added.
“With the fighting, there is no longer a market and, in any case, we have no more money,” added another resident, Essam Abbas. For all civil servants at least, salaries have not been paid since March.
Last week, violinist Khaled Senhouri, a music figure in Khartoum, died of “starvation” in Omdurman, a city facing the capital Khartoum, unable to leave his home to get supplies, several of his friends reported on Facebook.
In Port Sudan, on the east coast spared by the war, nine people, including four soldiers, died Sunday evening in the crash of a civilian plane, announces the army.
“A child survived” in the crash of this “Antonov civil plane” in this airport, the only one in operation in the country, she specifies.
Since April 15, air raids by the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and artillery and drone fire from General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR) have claimed 3,900 lives, according to a new report from the NGO Acled, and 3.3 million displaced persons and refugees.
Before the war, one in three Sudanese was already suffering from hunger. Today more than half of the 48 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid to survive, but NGOs and the UN say they are denied access.
On Sunday, in Port Sudan, where many officials are now based, the authorities announced the first export of gold from Sudan – Africa’s third largest producer – since the start of the war.
It is 226 kilograms sent to the United Arab Emirates, the main buyer of Sudanese gold, officials said at a press conference.
At the same time, the State-owned Mining Resources company announced the death of eight miners in an artisanal mine in the same state of Port Sudan.