Thousands of civilians fled on Wednesday under the bombs Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where fighting between the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the regular army left nearly 200 dead in 5 days.
On foot or by car, on roads strewn with corpses and charred armored vehicles, thousands of Sudanese are trying to pass under the crossfire of the FSR of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, and the army led by the general Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, in charge since their joint coup in 2021.
“Life is impossible in Khartoum,” Alawya al-Tayeb, 33, told AFP on his way south. “I did everything so that my children did not see the corpses”, because they are “already traumatized”.
“We are going to relatives in Wad Madani”, capital of the Al-Jazeera region, 200 km south of the capital, explains to AFP Mohammed Saleh, a 43-year-old civil servant. Now that soldiers and paramilitaries are prowling the streets, “we are afraid that our houses will be attacked”.
While the fighting mainly affects Khartoum and the Darfur region (west), the two generals remain deaf to the numerous calls for a ceasefire.
The FSR announced on Wednesday “a 24-hour truce”, but few believe it, because a truce announced Tuesday at the same time had not been respected.
In the capital of more than five million inhabitants, electricity and running water are lacking and stray bullets regularly pierce a wall or a window. Sometimes a bomb from the sky reduces a building or a hospital to a pile of rubble.
Monday evening, the UN had identified nearly 200 dead and more than 1,800 injured, but doctors assure that the toll is likely to be much heavier, the emergency services having been unable to reach many other victims.
Disused hospitals
Air force and artillery from both sides shelled nine hospitals in Khartoum. In all, 39 out of 59 hospitals in the areas affected by the fighting have been disabled or forced to close, doctors report.
As for food stocks, already limited in a country with triple-digit inflation, they are running out and no supply truck has entered Khartoum since Saturday.
No side seems to win at the moment and given the intensity of the fighting […]things may get even worse before the two generals sit down at the negotiating table
In a country of 45 million inhabitants where hunger affects more than a third of the population, humanitarians and diplomats say they can no longer work: three employees of the World Food Program have been killed in Darfur, and the UN denounces ” looting, attacks and sexual violence against humanitarian workers”.
The inhabitants live in fear: they have not forgotten the battles, raids and other atrocities which earned dictator Omar el-Bashir (deposed in 2019) two arrest warrants for “war crimes”, “crimes against the ‘humanity’ and ‘genocide’ in Darfur. At the time, he had delegated the scorched earth policy to Hemedti.
Dead bodies and stray dogs
So, on Wednesday, thousands of women and children took the road to the provinces bordering Khartoum, according to witnesses.
Corpses lie under a blazing sun. As pestilential odors begin to emerge from them, a few people venture to cover them with a sheet. A man explains that he wants to prevent stray dogs from approaching it.
Sometimes, in a backfiring din, a convoy of fighters perched on vans speeds by, or some are posted on the side of the road to check the vehicles.
A few dozen kilometers from the capital, life goes on as if nothing had happened, with shops open and transport operating normally.
In Khartoum, on the other hand, the attacks spared no one, not even foreigners. The Belgian boss of the EU humanitarian mission was notably “hospitalized” after being shot.
After five days of fighting, it is impossible to know who is controlling what, as the confusion is total and the disinformation online, galloping.
However, satellite images show the extent of the damage, visible in particular at the headquarters of the general staff.
A dozen planes lie in ashes on the airport tarmac; the headquarters of general intelligence appears devastated; what used to be a depot for petrol tankers is now just a huge black smudge.
“No side seems to be winning at the moment and given the intensity of the fighting […]things can get even worse before the two generals sit down at the negotiating table,” warns Clément Deshayes, a professor at the University of Paris 1.
For this, “their regional partners would have to exert pressure and, for the moment, the declarations do not go in this direction”, still affirms to AFP this specialist in Sudan.
Neighboring Egypt is trying to recover several of its soldiers kidnapped in the North by the FSR. “They have been transferred to Khartoum and will be handed over when circumstances permit,” the FSR said.