(Wad Madani) Khartoum was shaken on Monday by heavy artillery fire from the paramilitaries and the army, attacked on several fronts and which once again called for the reinforcement of civilians in a war without end after about three months.
The noise of the fighting “started around four o’clock in the morning and has not stopped since”, reports to AFP one of the millions of inhabitants still blocked in the Sudanese capital, without water, without electricity and with reserves of food and money almost dry.
The merciless war for power that opposes the army led by General Abdel Fattah to the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo has since April 15 caused nearly 3,000 deaths and 2.8 million displaced and refugees.
The humanitarian crisis continues to worsen in a country where, even before the war, one in three people suffered from hunger. It also threatens to destabilize an entire region straddling the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, areas already themselves in the grip of violence.
But the two belligerents have continued to ignore calls for a ceasefire from all over the world. Certain of being able to win militarily, the two camps refuse to open negotiations and rather prefer to ensure their supply over the long term.
“Preparing” civilians for combat
The army thus said on Monday that 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.
The governor of Darfur, a western region already ravaged by war in the 2000s, then General Burhane, however, both did not hesitate to call for the distribution of arms.
“Young people and men who are capable of it” must enlist, thus launched the head of the army in his speech to the nation for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
In Darfur, a region as large as France and bordering Chad, armed civilians have already taken part in the fighting, as have tribal fighters.
There, assures the UN, the war has an “ethnic dimension” and the abuses committed – mainly by the RSF and allied Arab militias against non-Arab civilians – could be “crimes against humanity”.
Sunday evening again, the RSF and the army were fighting in Nyala, capital of South Darfur, according to local residents.
And the count of sexual assaults – attributed by almost all of the survivors to the FSR – is getting heavier every day, according to the government body for the fight against violence against women.
The Janjawids, Arab militiamen who form the bulk of the troops of the FSR, had carried out under the command of General Daglo the policy of scorched earth in Darfur, looting, raping and killing members of non-Arab ethnic groups on behalf of the dictator Omar al-Bashir, in the 2000s.
children in war
Today under the fire of critics, the FSR are trying to give pledges of appeasement.
After announcing the formation of emergency courts-martial, they announced that they particularly wanted to punish “looting, vandalism and above all the theft of civilian cars”, while videos of fighters forcing families out of their vehicles flooded the social networks.
The FSRs are also accused of “stealing” houses and evicting their inhabitants.
These displaced people, sometimes without any hope of returning with entire neighborhoods razed to the ground in Khartoum and Darfur, must absolutely be helped, argue the humanitarians.
“Thousands of families with children are fleeing violence in West Darfur” to Chad, reports UNICEF, which has already counted hundreds of children among the victims of the war.
According to UNICEF, more than 13.6 million children need humanitarian assistance. And 300,000 of them could die of starvation if no help is given to them.