(Khartoum) The fighting continues Tuesday in Sudan where the truce, never respected, was extended to try to deliver vital humanitarian aid for the country on the brink of famine.
Fighting since April 15, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries agreed to extend Monday night a ceasefire in effect since April 22. May and which is monitored by the Saudis and the United States.
But on the ground, air raids, artillery fire and armored movements do not cease.
And the war which has already killed more than 1,800 people, according to the NGO ACLED, and nearly one and a half million displaced persons and refugees according to the UN, continues to kill and force families to leave their homes.
“Acute Malnutrition”
On the night of Monday to Tuesday, residents told AFP of fighting in Khartoum and Nyala, Darfur, a vast western region already ravaged in the 2000s by a deadly war.
Sudan was already before the war one of the poorest countries in the world. One in three residents suffered from hunger, long power cuts were a daily occurrence and the health system was on the verge of collapse.
Today, after almost seven weeks of war, 25 of the 45 million Sudanese can no longer survive without humanitarian aid, says the UN.
Among them are more than 13.6 million children, UNICEF points out, including “620,000 suffering from acute malnutrition, half of whom could die if they are not helped in time”.
Running water no longer arrives in certain districts of Khartoum, electricity only works a few hours a week and three quarters of the hospitals in the combat zones are out of order.
The establishments that are still operating have almost no more equipment and medicines, and, like all infrastructures, they have to deal with a price of fuel oil for electric generators multiplied by 20.
Humanitarian workers have been asking since the start of the war to be able to access Khartoum and Darfur, the two regions most affected by the war, to replenish their reserves, some of which have been looted.
But so far, they have only been able to deliver small quantities of food or medicine, as their personnel cannot move due to the fighting.
As for certain areas of Darfur, they are now completely cut off from the world, without electricity, internet or telephone, and Sudanese activists say they fear the worst.
If Washington and Riyadh welcomed the extension of the truce for five days, on the ground, the Sudanese now fear “a total civil war”, according to the Forces of Freedom and Change (FLC), the civil bloc ousted during of the putsch led in 2021 by the two then allied generals.
If this group is sounding the alarm, it is because calls to arm civilians are increasing.
In Darfur, where fighting already involves military, paramilitaries, local militias, tribal fighters and armed civilians, the issue was reignited when the governor, an army-aligned ex-rebel, called on everyone to take up arms “ to protect his property.
“Irresponsible”
“In the situation we are in, we have to arm ourselves, because everyone is in danger”, pleads to AFP a resident of this border region of Chad, speaking of attacks against inhabitants in their homes, or of looting.
But, retorts another, calling on civilians to arm themselves is “totally irresponsible: it is a very dangerous call that could lead us to civil war. »
Chad, South Sudan or Ethiopia, neighboring states themselves in the grip of violence, fear contagion and are calling for aid from the UN, which in return repeats having received only a tiny share of the funds from its donors.
On Monday, the UN warned that with the war, Sudan had joined the list of ten countries that could soon experience famine.
And in a few days, the rainy season will begin and with it the fear of epidemics, from malaria to cholera.