(Wad Madani) Bodies of people in military uniforms litter the streets of Omdurman, on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital, witnesses reported Thursday, with the UN alarmed by an intensification of fighting in the Darfur region in the seventh months of the war between the army and the paramilitaries.
Clashes continue in Khartoum and its suburbs as well as in Darfur in the west of the country, as a new period of negotiations sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United States ended this week without success to an agreement on a ceasefire.
“Bodies of people in military uniforms lie in the streets of the city center after yesterday’s fighting [mercredi] “, said witnesses in Oumdourman, reached by telephone from Wad Madani, south of Khartoum.
Others reported that a shell fell on the AlNau hospital north of Omdurman, the last operational medical facility in the region, killing a health “worker”.
The UN has also expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
“Hundreds of thousands of civilians and displaced people are now in great danger in El-Facher, capital of North Darfur, facing a rapid deterioration in the security situation [et] a lack of food and water,” Toby Harward, UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Darfur, wrote on X.
“The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army are fighting for control of the town, and this will have a catastrophic impact on civilians,” he added.
The United States Embassy, for its part, expressed its “great concern over reports of serious human rights violations committed by the RSF” in Darfur.
It reports “in particular murders in the Ardmata region, in the state of West Darfur” and is concerned about the fact that leaders and members of the Massalit, one of the largest non-Arab ethnic minorities in West Darfur, are “targeted”.
The Sovereignty Council, the highest authority in the country, announced Monday the death of “a pillar of civil administration in West Darfur […]murdered” by the RSF who “attacked houses in the Ardmata region”.
“His son and eight of his grandchildren were also killed,” adds this body chaired by the head of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane.
Started on April 15, the war between the army and the RSF of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo left more than 9,000 dead according to an estimate from the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), considered to be largely underestimated. .
It also displaced more than 6 million people and destroyed most infrastructure.
The UN sounded the alarm on Thursday over the growing influx into South Sudan of people fleeing fighting, both Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returning to their country.
“The number of people arriving in South Sudan increased in October by at least 50% compared to September,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, said in New York, specifying that 366,000 men , women and children have crossed the border into South Sudan since April 15.
“As the conflict approaches southern (Sudan), this could cause even more displacement,” he warned.