(Wad Madani) Paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters (HQ) in central Khartoum on Sunday for the second consecutive day, witnesses said, in the sixth month of a war between rival generals that has left thousands of deaths.
Clashes are now taking place around the headquarters with different types of weapons, witnesses told AFP by telephone from Khartoum. Others reported clashes in the town of El Obeid, 350 kilometers further south.
Fighting between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has intensified since Saturday, causing fires in several key buildings in the center from the Sudanese capital.
PHOTO IBRAHIM MOHAMMED ISHAK, REUTERS
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane
Nawal Mohammed, 44, said the fighting on Saturday and Sunday was, according to her, “the most violent since the start of the war”.
Although she lives about three kilometers from the nearest clashes, her doors and windows shook from the force of the explosions, she said.
On social networks, users shared images verified by AFP of flames devouring monuments, buildings and towers, including that of the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company building was the target of an attack in Khartoum.
The images also show buildings with smashed windows and charred or bullet-riddled walls.
“It’s distressing to see these institutions destroyed like this,” Badr al-Din Babiker, a resident of the east of the capital, told AFP.
“After all this destruction, what will they have left to govern the country? “, he asked himself.
“City of Ashes”
Since its outbreak on April 15, the war has left nearly 7,500 dead, according to a conservative estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
It has displaced more than five million people, including 2.8 million who have fled incessant airstrikes, artillery fire and street fighting in Khartoum’s neighborhoods.
“It’s as if they wanted to turn it into an uninhabitable city of ashes,” Hatem Ahmed, 53, told AFP.
The conflict has decimated already fragile infrastructure, closed 80% of the country’s hospitals and plunged millions of people into acute famine.
Those remaining in the city woke up Sunday to find clouds of smoke obscuring the horizon, as the sound of bombs and gunfire erupted in the capital.
“We hear huge detonations,” witnesses from the Mayo district (south), where the army targeted RSF bases with artillery fire, told AFP.
More than 50 people were killed last week in airstrikes on a market in Mayo, according to the United Nations, in one of the deadliest attacks since the start of the conflict.
On Sunday, a committee of volunteer pro-democracy lawyers also deplored that the fighting since Friday had killed dozens of civilians.
The violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, where targeted attacks by the RSF have triggered a new investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Fighting also took place in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, where witnesses reported exchanges of fire between the army and paramilitaries.