A hundred civilians were killed in Sudan where shootings and explosions increased in intensity on Monday in Khartoum, on the third day of fighting between the army and a powerful paramilitary force, led by two rival generals who are vying for power.
At least two hospitals in the capital have been evacuated “while rockets and bullets riddled their walls”, announced doctors who say they have no more blood bags or equipment to treat the wounded.
Since Saturday, the city from which rise columns of thick black smoke has been bathed in the smell of gunpowder. Its inhabitants are barricaded in their homes without running water or electricity for the most part, trembling with each new airstrike or artillery fire.
At least 97 civilians were killed, about half in Khartoum, and “dozens” of fighters died, according to the official doctors’ union, which counted 942 wounded. The two camps never communicated on their losses.
In Khartoum, where only men in fatigues and military vehicles circulate, the few grocery stores open have warned that they will only last a few days if no truck arrives.
After the Arab League and the African Union, the United States and the United Kingdom called on Monday for the “immediate cessation” of violence.
The conflict had been latent for weeks between the head of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, de facto leader of the country, and his number two, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, at the head of the Forces rapid support (FSR), who together ousted civilians from power during the October 2021 putsch.
Since Saturday, the fighting with heavy weapons has not ceased and the air force regularly targets, even in the middle of Khartoum, the headquarters of the FSR, former militiamen from the war in the Darfur region who have become official army auxiliaries.
“Burhane is bombing civilians from the air, we are pursuing him and will bring him to justice,” General Daglo said in English on Twitter. Opposite, the army assured on Facebook “to get closer to the hour of final victory”.
Hospitals in distress
It was still impossible on Monday to know which force controls what. The FSR announced that they took the airport and entered the presidential palace, which the army denied.
The army claims to hold the headquarters of its staff, one of the main power complexes in Khartoum.
As for state television, after two days of fighting in its vicinity, it now broadcasts images and press releases from the army, which claims to have regained ground in many places.
While no truce is emerging, doctors and humanitarians are sounding the alarm: already in normal times, in Sudan, homes are only supplied with electricity for a few hours a day. In some districts of Khartoum, it has been completely cut off since Saturday, like running water.
Doctors have announced power cuts in operating rooms.
Patients, sometimes children, and their relatives “have no more food or drink”, said a network of pro-democracy doctors, saying that they can no longer let treated patients leave safely, which creates “a congestion that prevents everyone from being taken care of”.
Two Greeks were injured in Khartoum and around 15 people are locked up in the city’s Orthodox church, unable to get out because of the fighting, announced the Orthodox Metropolitan of Nubia and All Sudan, Mgr Savvas, who is in this church.
The UN, which had proposed a humanitarian truce of a few hours on Sunday, said it was “extremely disappointed” that the belligerents did not respect it, and denounced “an intensification of the fighting” Monday morning.
“First time in Khartoum”
With more than a third of Sudan’s 45 million people in need of humanitarian aid before the recent spike in violence, the World Food Program (WFP) on Sunday suspended aid after three of its staff were killed in fighting in Darfur. .
“It is the first time in the history of Sudan since independence (in 1956) that there is such a level of violence in the center, in Khartoum”, assures AFP Kholood Khair, who founded the Confluence Advisory research center in Khartoum.
Khartoum “has always been the safest place in Sudan, during the murderous wars against rebels” launched in Darfur and elsewhere in the 2000s, she continues.
“Today, the fighting is taking place all over the city, the FSR are established everywhere and especially in densely populated areas because the belligerents believed that the possibility of a high civilian toll would deter the other camp: now we know that their power struggle at all costs prevailed,” added Ms. Khair.