Explosions and gunshots echo Thursday in Khartoum, the twentieth day of fierce fighting between the army and the paramilitaries who are vying for power in Sudan, risking dragging the region into a crisis.
Despite the announcement of a new truce until May 11, “clashes with all kinds of weapons and explosions” are shaking Khartoum, residents report to AFP.
Like the more than five million inhabitants of the capital, they now live only to the rhythm of the bombardments, holed up to avoid stray bullets in houses without water or electricity, with less and less money and food, all in blistering heat.
In surrounding villages, “fuel prices have gone up, there is no cash or online payment or electricity”, laments Ahmed Hachem, a vegetable vendor who says he runs his irrigation pump “to plants that no longer give anything”.
Since April 15, the war between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, has claimed around 700 lives, according to the ACLED project which lists the victims. of conflict. Faced with more than 5,000 wounded, according to official figures, hospitals cannot keep up: less than one in five is still functioning in Khartoum and almost none in Darfur.
The fighting has displaced more than 335,000 people and pushed another 115,000 into exile, according to the UN, which expects eight times as many refugees.
Looting
The day the war broke out, the two generals – allies for their putsch of 2021 – were to discuss with the UN and international mediators the integration of the FSR into the army, condition sine qua non a return to the transition to a civilian government and therefore the resumption of international aid, suspended in reaction to the putsch.
Instead of political negotiations, the 45 million Sudanese woke up to the sound of artillery and air raids.
“We can say that we have not succeeded in preventing” the war which took the UN “by surprise”, acknowledged its secretary general Antonio Guterres on Wednesday.
“With every additional minute of war, people die or are thrown into the streets, society falls apart and the state weakens and breaks down a little more,” lamented Khalid Omar Youssef, a former civilian minister sacked during the war. putsch.
In the violence-spared coastal city of Port Sudan, UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths tries to organize stock replenishments after mass looting in a country where one in three people depended already receiving humanitarian aid before the war.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, describes the chaos in Khartoum: “an air force raid on a hospital”, the RSF “launching attacks in areas densely populated cities…
In Darfur, where civilians were armed to take part in clashes mixing soldiers, paramilitaries and tribal or rebel fighters according to the UN, the NGO Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) recounts the desolation: “There were at least 191 dead, dozens of homes burned, thousands of displaced persons and NRC offices were looted”.
“African Solutions”
South Sudan, a historic mediator, announced a truce “from May 4 to 11”.
When it came into force, the army and the FSR accused each other of violating it.
As diplomatic channels multiply in Africa and the Middle East, the army pleaded for “African solutions to the continent’s problems”.
She also welcomed the American-Saudi mediations, after a tour this week of her emissary to Riyadh then to Cairo and to the Arab League.
Arab foreign ministers will meet on Sunday around the “Sudanese file”, in which they support different camps, a senior diplomat told AFP.
General Burhane’s camp has pledged to “appoint an envoy to negotiate a truce” with the rival camp, under the aegis of “the presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti”, in a country that has yet to be determined.
As the exodus of Sudanese continues, foreigners continue to be evacuated by the hundreds, mainly via Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
At the Egyptian border in the north, “more than 50,000 people, including 47,000 Sudanese had crossed on May 3”, according to the UN which was authorized on Thursday to deploy on the Egyptian side.
Mr. Guterres considered it “absolutely essential” that the crisis does not extend beyond the borders, recalling that “other countries in the region (were) in their own peace processes”.