(Khartoum) Fighting raged again on Monday in Sudan, where calls for arms are increasing, on the last day of a one-week truce never respected and that international mediators want to extend.
Residents of Khartoum told AFP that fighting was taking place in the northern suburbs and that artillery fire was heard in the south of the capital, a city of more than five million inhabitants.
Since the beginning of the truce on May 22, some manage to get out quickly to buy something to eat or drink, for twice as much as before the war.
But thousands of families continue to hide in their homes, many without running water or electricity, for fear of stray bullets.
The situation is worse in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan bordering Chad, already ravaged by war in the 2000s, according to Toby Harvard, an official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Newborns dead in hospital
“Sporadic fighting between soldiers and paramilitaries in recent days in El-Fasher, North Darfur, and even inside the Abou Chouk displaced persons camp, have resulted in civilian casualties,” he said.
Homes have been looted and tens of thousands of people have been further displaced by the fighting, which is “a flagrant violation of the ceasefire and impedes the distribution of humanitarian aid”, he added.
According to the UN, 25 of the 45 million Sudanese now depend on humanitarian aid, in this country which is one of the poorest in the world.
Last Monday, the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, the de facto ruler of Sudan, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, his deputy who became his rival, pledged to cease air raids, artillery fire and street fighting to let civilians out and allow the delivery of humanitarian aid.
But on the seventh day of the truce, which will expire at 3:45 p.m. (Eastern Time), the few shipments of food and medicine that have reached a few hospitals in Khartoum or in areas spared from the fighting are only a drop. water as needed.
In East Darfur, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), “about thirty newborns have died in a hospital since the fighting began, including six in the same week due to lack of oxygen during the power cuts. “.
Since the start of the war on April 15, more than 1,800 people have been killed, according to the NGO ACLED, which specializes in collecting information in conflict zones, including 18 humanitarian workers. More than a million others have been forced to move elsewhere in Sudan and nearly 350,000 outside the country, according to the UN.
” Civil war ”
Neighboring states fear contagion and are calling for aid from the UN, which in return repeats having received only a tiny share of funds from its donors.
On Monday, the UN warned that with the war, Sudan has joined the list of ten countries that could soon experience famine.
In a few days, the rainy season will begin and with it its cohort of epidemics, from malaria to cholera.
The country will have to deal with three-quarters of the hospitals out of service in the combat zones, according to the doctors’ union, and others, overwhelmed in the spared areas, but where the displaced are piled up.
The belligerents suggest that they could extend their truce as demanded by the Saudi and American mediators who negotiated this ceasefire with the two camps.
But on the ground, the signals are not for appeasement.
After the army recalled its pensioners, tribes in the east of the country who are demanding arms, the governor of Darfur, an ex-rebel now an army ally, called on civilians to take up arms.
The Umma party, the oldest in the country, ousted from power by the putsch led in 2021 by the two generals now at war, denounced an “attempt to drag the country into civil war”.
Whether the truce is extended or not, a new danger will remain present: more and more unexploded projectiles litter the roads and even the buildings, warned the UN agency responsible for mine clearance.