At least 12 civilians were killed Sunday in the bombardments of the soldiers and the paramilitaries who now clash in a new city of Darfur, a vast region of western Sudan that refugees are constantly fleeing.
“The first provisional toll is 12 civilians killed in Nyala”, capital of South Darfur, reports to Agence France-Presse (AFP) a doctor from this city on condition of anonymity.
“But we know that people have been killed or injured before they can reach a hospital, because the violence of the fighting prevents movement,” he explains.
Since April 15, the war between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR) has claimed more than 2,800 lives, according to the NGO Acled, and more than 2.5 million displaced persons and refugees, according to the UN.
One of the heaviest tolls is undoubtedly that of El-Geneina, capital of West Darfur, where since the end of April, tribal and civilian fighters have been involved in fighting between soldiers and paramilitaries.
There were “1,100 dead” in this city, according to the UN, and above all abuses that could constitute “crimes against humanity”.
In the dirt streets of El-Geneina, corpses hastily covered in clothes lie under the scorching sun as shop curtains are drawn down or have been ripped open by looters.
In the middle, cohorts of families flee, trying to avoid the bullets on the thirty kilometers that separate them from neighboring Chad. Nearly 160,000 people have already taken refuge there to flee the war in Sudan.
Khartoum bombed
On the other side of the border, in Adré, they pile up under tarpaulins stretched over cut branches or form long lines to obtain water or food.
In all, 2.2 million people are internally displaced while half a million others have left the country.
The UN and humanitarian workers are trying to help these families who left in haste, often without being able to bring anything from their homes, most of which are now occupied by paramilitaries.
But the funds are lacking. The UN met only half of its needs at a conference in Geneva. The NGOs denounce the Sudanese bureaucracy which blocks their cargoes in the port of Port-Sudan, on the Red Sea, or does not issue visas or travel permits to their teams.
For a long time, Americans and Saudis negotiated truces to help them circulate. But since Wednesday, Washington has thrown in the towel. Negotiations between emissaries of the two camps never really started and, above all, while the negotiations got bogged down, the troops of the two camps repositioned themselves.
The army has stepped up its air raid campaigns on Khartoum. The FSR multiplied the barrages of artillery fire on the bases of the army and the police. And both sides announce new offensives every day.
On Sunday, a paramilitary source told AFP that his camp had “taken control of the police headquarters in southern Khartoum and all the equipment therein”.
The day before, the FSR announced that they had shot down two army planes.
The latter, for her part, claims to have repelled “three attacks by rebel militiamen” on Saturday.
Residents of Khartoum, forced to survive blistering heat and increasingly biting shortages without water or electricity, continue to shiver with every shot.
On Sunday, several of them reported artillery fire in the south of the city and clashes in its greater suburbs.
“Rockets are falling on houses,” one of them told AFP in Omdurman, the northwestern suburb of Khartoum.