Heavy artillery fire shook Khartoum again on Monday, after more than two and a half months of fighting in Sudan between paramilitaries and the army, beset on several fronts and which once again called for civilian reinforcements.
The fighting began “around four in the morning and has not stopped since,” a resident of the capital told AFP.
Several million people are still stuck in Khartoum, without water, without electricity and with reserves of food and money almost dry.
At the end of the day, the air force bombarded a convoy of paramilitary tanks which went up towards Khartoum from the south of the country, according to witnesses.
The war for power between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has claimed nearly 3,000 lives since April 15, according to the NGO Acled, and 2.8 million displaced persons and refugees according to the UN.
The humanitarian crisis continues to worsen in a country where more than one in two inhabitants, according to the UN, now depends on humanitarian aid to survive. The conflict also threatens to destabilize an area straddling the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, regions already themselves struggling with violence.
But the two belligerents have so far ignored calls for a ceasefire, certain of being able to win militarily.
“Preparing” civilians for combat
The army said on Monday it was ready to “receive and prepare” volunteer fighters. The question of arming civilians, which would plunge the country into civil war, has been debated for weeks.
“Young people and men who are capable of it” must enlist, the army chief launched on June 27, in his address to the nation for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
In Darfur, a vast region in the west of the country bordering Chad, armed civilians have already taken part in the fighting, as have tribal fighters.
The governor of Darfur, Minni Minnawi, a former rebel leader now close to the army, had already in May called on civilians to take up arms.
On Monday, a coalition of Arab tribes in the state of South Darfur announced in a video posted their allegiance to the RSF and called on its members to desert the army to join the ranks of the paramilitaries.
The war has an “ethnic dimension” in Darfur, warned the UN, saying that abuses committed in this region, mainly by the RSF and allied Arab militias against non-Arab civilians, could constitute “crimes against the humanity”.
The count of sexual assaults, attributed by almost all of the survivors to the FSR, is increasing every day, according to the government body for the fight against violence against women.
The Janjaweed, Arab militiamen who form the bulk of the troops of the FSR, had carried out in the 2000s, under the command of General Daglo, the scorched earth policy in Darfur, looting, raping and killing members of non-ethnic groups. Arabs on behalf of dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Children at risk
Today under the fire of critics, the FSR are trying to give pledges of appeasement.
After announcing the formation of emergency courts-martial, they said on Sunday that they wanted to punish “looting, vandalism and especially the theft of civilian cars”, as videos of fighters forcing families out of their vehicles flooded social networks.
The FSRs are also accused of “stealing” houses and evicting their inhabitants who come to swell the flow of displaced people, sometimes without hope of return.
Humanitarian organizations have sounded the alarm in particular on the fate of children, of whom more than 13.6 million, according to Unicef, need humanitarian aid, among whom 300,000 could die of starvation if they do not receive this aid.