Airstrikes and explosions rocked Khartoum on Saturday, killing civilians as residents of western Darfur continue to flee violence, more than two months after Sudan’s war began between the army and the paramilitaries.
The fighting between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, plunged this East African country, one of the poorest in the world, in an inextricable crisis.
In Khartoum, airstrikes have intensified in the past two days, witnesses told theFrance Media Agency.
On Saturday, they again targeted residential areas in the south of the capital, causing the death of “17 civilians including five children” and wounding “11 others”, according to the local resistance committee, one of the militant cells which organizes the mutual aid between the inhabitants of Khartoum. At this point, theFrance Media Agency was unable to confirm this toll with independent sources.
The FSR, which accuses the army of specifically targeting residential areas, claimed to have shot down an army fighter plane on Saturday. In a video shared by the paramilitaries on Twitter on Saturday, brick houses can be seen destroyed and blankets covering what appear to be dead bodies.
Mediation “by bullets”
“The bullets will act as a mediator” between the army and the paramilitaries, General Yasser Atta, deputy army chief, said in a video posted on the regular army’s Facebook account on Friday.
Firings with “various types of weapons” were also reported by residents of southern Khartoum, while in the northern suburbs resounded “rocket and heavy artillery fire”, witnesses told AFP.France Media Agency.
In this chaos, entire districts of the capital are deprived of drinking water and electricity only works for a few hours a week.
The situation is just as alarming in the Darfur region, where “violence is raging”, alerted the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Saturday.
Testimonies of large-scale violence against civilians are increasing there, and according to the United Nations (UN), more than 149,000 people have fled to Chad since the fighting began on April 15.
In recent days alone, “6,000 people have fled the town of El-Geneina” in West Darfur to find refuge in the town of Adré in Chad, MSF said on Saturday.
“The situation is frankly overwhelming,” says Dr Seybou Diarra, MSF coordinator for the Adré region.
Humanitarian disaster in Darfur
Already devastated in the 2000s by a particularly bloody civil war, this vast region of western Sudan is heading for a new “humanitarian disaster” that the world must prevent, pleaded Thursday the head of the UN for humanitarian affairs , Martin Griffiths.
The head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes, said on Tuesday he was “particularly alarmed” by the situation in Darfur where the violence could constitute “crimes against humanity”.
In the country, the humanitarian situation is only getting worse: the hospitals in the areas of clashes are only partially functioning, when they are not closed.
In two months of war, more than 2,000 people have been killed in Sudan, according to the NGO ACLED. More than 2.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, according to the UN.
Despite attempts at mediation led in particular by Riyadh and Washington, no scenario of a return to peace is in sight.
And the numerous truces announced were almost never respected. Humanitarian aid remained blocked or reached civilians in very insufficient quantities.
Twenty-five million of Sudan’s 45 million people now depend on humanitarian aid to survive, according to the UN.
An international conference on aid to Sudan sponsored by Saudi Arabia is scheduled for June 19 in Geneva.