(Khartoum) Artillery continues to rock Khartoum on Friday despite US sanctions against the army and paramilitaries, which appear to be preparing an escalation in their struggle for power.
Artillery shelling continued all night near the state television, residents told AFP.
After seven weeks of war between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR), which left more than 1,800 dead and more than a million and a half displaced and refugees , Washington raised his voice.
The White House announced sanctions against two army arms groups and two companies, including one operating in Sudan’s gold mines, run by General Daglo and two of his brothers.
According to a 2019 study, these two groups transferred millions of dollars to FSRs from and to dirham accounts in the United Arab Emirates.
A few hours after the announcement of the sanctions, the army announced the arrival in Khartoum of new troops from other states in Sudan.
“The army should soon launch a massive offensive, that’s why it has withdrawn” from negotiations in Saudi Arabia for a temporary ceasefire, deciphers researcher Kholood Khair on Twitter.
Killed in a market
Diplomatic isolation, diplomats and experts have been hammering for years, is not a real threat to the two warring generals.
General Daglo is considered one of the richest men in Sudan – Africa’s third-largest gold producer – and can easily win allegiances, and General Burhane, like all his peers in the army, has developed embargoed strategies to circumvent international sanctions.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ARMY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane visited his troops in Khartoum on Thursday.
Today, “the army wants to record military gains to be in a better position in the event of the resumption of negotiations”, assures Kholood Khair.
For nearly a month, emissaries from the two belligerents had been talking in Jeddah, on the Red Sea, under pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia. They agreed after two weeks on the commitment in principle to “protect civilians”. Then they signed two purely theoretical truces.
On the ground, the fighting continues to claim victims, the looting continues and the displaced are more and more numerous.
On Wednesday, as the army scuttled negotiations in Jeddah, it deployed its heavy weapons in Khartoum. Since then, the guns have continued to thunder, killing at least 18 civilians in a market on Wednesday.
Opposite, the FSR continue to take up residence in hospitals or homes of civilians thrown on the roads of the country, one of the poorest in the world.
The fighting is even tougher in Darfur, bordering Chad.
Displaced people who arrived there told the NGO Médecins sans frontières (MSF) that they had seen “armed men shooting at people trying to flee on foot, villages looted and the wounded dying”.
UN mission expired
And the situation could become more complicated with the approach of the rainy season, indicates Christophe Garnier, emergency coordinator for MSF.
“The already extremely precarious living conditions in the makeshift camps will worsen and the flooding of the rivers will complicate movement and supplies,” he warns.
Typically in Sudan, summer is the season for malaria, peaks in food insecurity and child malnutrition.
But this year, the aid workers who before the war helped a third of the 45 million Sudanese, may not be there.
Eighteen of them were killed and no safe corridor was cleared for them to help. Their shipments arriving by air are blocked at customs. And international staff are denied visas to come and relieve local employees who are exhausted or holed up at home for fear of stray bullets.
Because they are also targets: “57 of their warehouses and 55 of their offices have been looted and 115 of their vehicles stolen”, report Washington and Riyadh.
The situation is “catastrophic”, repeats the UN tirelessly: three quarters of hospitals have ceased to operate and the remaining quarter must deal with almost empty reserves.
Twenty-five million people need help and half of the 350,000 refugees, many of whom left with nothing, find themselves in countries themselves in the grip of crises and violence.
The United Nations is expected to discuss Friday the fate of its mission in Sudan, whose mandate officially expires on Saturday.
General Burhane has already demanded the replacement of the head of the mission, Volker Perthes, and most of his members were evacuated from the country at the start of the war.