(Khartoum) Air raids, gunfire and explosions rocked Khartoum again on Monday, despite the announcement of a truce in fighting between the army and paramilitaries that has brought Sudan to the brink of a humanitarian and health “catastrophe” according to the UN.
Khartoum, the capital of five million inhabitants, is “flown over by fighter jets” while gunfire and explosions echo in different neighborhoods, according to witnesses.
Since April 15, the fighting that has left hundreds dead has pitted the two generals in charge of the country since their putsch in 2021, trapping millions of Sudanese.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as Hemedti, had agreed to extend a three-day ceasefire to midnight on Sunday. , after mediation by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
But since the beginning of the conflict, several announced truces were immediately violated. According to experts, they only mean that the secure corridors for the evacuation of foreigners are maintained and that the negotiations, which take place abroad, continue.
So far, the two generals refuse direct negotiations.
“The scale and speed at which events are unfolding in Sudan [sont] unprecedented,” said the UN on Sunday, which dispatched its head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, to the region in an attempt to “bring immediate aid” to the inhabitants.
For Mr. Griffiths, the “humanitarian situation is reaching a breaking point” in the country, one of the poorest in the world. The massive looting has “depleted most of the stocks” of humanitarian organisations, he said.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People walk down a street in Khartoum as fighting continues on 1er may.
In a country where a third of the inhabitants suffered from hunger before the war, the World Food Program (WFP) however said on Monday to resume “immediately its activities”, suspended after the death of three of its employees.
” Disaster ”
For the World Health Organization (WHO), the already “well-known” health crisis in Sudan has now passed into the state of “disaster”.
After 20 years of international embargo, “the health system was facing multiple crises, with extremely fragile infrastructures”, explained to AFP Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the regional director of the WHO.
Today, he says, “only 16% of hospitals in Khartoum are operating at maximum capacity”, the others having been bombed, occupied by belligerents or have no staff and stocks left.
The fighting left 528 dead and 4,599 injured, according to largely understated official figures.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) managed to deliver eight tonnes of aid on Sunday, a first since the start of the conflict, which, he warned, will only treat “1,500 wounded”.
The UN has identified 75,000 internally displaced people. At least 20,000 have fled to Chad, thousands more to the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Ethiopia.
In total, up to 270,000 people, according to a UN estimate, could flee the fighting which affects 12 of the 18 states of this country of 45 million inhabitants.
Residents of the capital, when not fleeing, remain barricaded, trying to survive despite food, water and electricity shortages.
“Half-hearted efforts”
Khartoum state has given civil servants “until further notice”, while police have deployed to prevent looting.
The authorities of White Nile State, in southern Sudan, have announced the arrival of 70,000 displaced people “in recent days” in its camps.
The Arab League is meeting in Cairo on Monday to discuss the situation, after the United Arab Emirates, allies of General Daglo, said it had called the army chief.
General Burhane sent an emissary to Riyadh on Sunday, calling for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday.
The UN is particularly concerned about the situation in West Darfur, where around 100 people have been killed in fighting in which it says civilians are involved.
This region had been marked by the bloody civil war started in 2003 between the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir and ethnic minorities.
Many countries, including France, Germany and the United States, have evacuated their nationals from Sudan and several of them continue the evacuations.
PHOTO PO PHOT ARRON HOARE, UK MINISTRY OF DEFENSE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this photo released by the British Ministry of Defence, the last evacuees and military personnel board a plane bound for Cyprus from Wadi Seidna air base on April 29.
This “exodus reflects a very dark reality”, the United States like the other powers making only “timid and belated efforts to stop the fighting and help the Sudanese”, observes Alex de Waal, specialist in Sudan.
According to him, the states most involved in this country, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the lead, have never “wanted to see a democratic revolution in the Arab world”.
The putsch of October 2021 had closed the parenthesis of the democratic transition begun with the fall in 2019 of dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Generals Burhane and Daglo, now in a struggle for power, formed a common front during this putsch to oust the civilians with whom they shared power.
But differences then appeared and, for lack of agreement on the integration of the FSR into the army, degenerated into open war.