Conflict in Sudan | Fighting continues despite extended truce

(Khartoum) Fighting in Sudan continues on Friday in Khartoum and especially in the Darfur region, despite an extension of the truce concluded between the army and paramilitaries engaged in a war that has claimed more than 500 lives in nearly two weeks .

In El-Geneina, capital of West Darfur, 74 people were killed during the first two days of fighting on Monday and Tuesday, the doctors’ union reported in a provisional report, the deaths of the last days not having been able to be counted insofar as all the hospitals are “out of service”.

Shortly before the expiration at midnight of a three-day ceasefire, the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, approved a 72-hour extension of the truce which was almost never respected by either side.

In Darfur, “the situation is still very tense”, says a resident of El-Geneina: “It was a very difficult day yesterday. There is no more food”, because “the markets have been looted”.

Since Thursday evening, lawyers and doctors have been sounding the alarm for the Darfur region, located on the border with Chad. In El-Geneina, fighters took out “submachine guns, heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns” and “fired rockets at houses”, reports the Darfur Bar Association.

“Burhane and Hemedti must immediately stop this stupid war which is being waged on the backs of civilians,” he urged.

The UN indicates for its part that “weapons are distributed” to civilians.

“Massacre”

The first evacuations of expatriates from the UN and humanitarian organizations in Darfur began on Monday. Shortly after, the violence increased in El-Geneina, assures the union of doctors evoking a “massacre”.

Some 50,000 children “suffering from acute malnutrition” are deprived of food aid in Darfur, warns the UN, which has suspended its activities there after the death of five humanitarian workers.

Little information is filtering from this region where a civil war started in 2003 between the regime of Omar al-Bashir, deposed in 2019, and insurgents from ethnic minorities left around 300,000 dead and nearly 2.5 million. displaced, according to the UN.

The belligerents continue to accuse each other of violating the truce. The army even denounced the shooting of the FSR on a Turkish military plane which came to evacuate nationals in Sudan. Ankara confirmed this information, specifying that the shots did not cause any injuries, according to the state agency Anadolu.

On the diplomatic front, the two generals each said they had exchanges with foreign leaders involved in the talks, including those of the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, South Sudan and the United States. Ethiopia.

Damping hopes of a democratic transition, the two generals together ousted civilians from power during a putsch in 2021. Since then, they have not managed to agree on the integration of paramilitaries into the army before finally go to war with each other on April 15.

“Facilitate transit”

In Khartoum, the five million inhabitants are deprived of running water and electricity as well as, often, of the internet and telephone. Gasoline and cash are also running out.

The fighting has thus caused a mass exodus in this country of 45 million inhabitants, one of the poorest in the world. The African Union calls for “facilitating the transit” of these civilians fleeing the fighting.

Several tens of thousands of people are already in the border countries, notably Chad to the west and Egypt to the north. A total of 270,000 people could flee to Chad and South Sudan, according to the UN.

Several Western countries, including the United States, France, Canada and the United Kingdom, continued to evacuate hundreds of people. China has announced that it has evacuated most of its nationals.

A new Saudi ship arrived Friday in Jeddah (west), bringing to 2,991 the number of people evacuated by Riyadh, which received most of the foreigners who left Sudan by sea.