(Khartoum) Fighting echoes in Khartoum on Monday evening despite the official entry into force of the week-long truce between the army and the paramilitaries supposed to allow civilians and humanitarian aid to pass into Sudan.
Since April 15, the war between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR) has left a thousand dead and more than a million displaced and refugees. .
The fighting usually wanes at night, but on Monday evening, after the truce officially came into effect at 3:45 p.m. (Eastern time), residents of the northeastern suburbs of Khartoum reported clashes to AFP .
And in the south of the Sudanese capital, residents said they “heard air strikes after the scheduled time of the truce”.
For the 37e consecutive day, the five million inhabitants of the Sudanese capital spent the day in the midst of fighting, under scorching heat, most without water, electricity and telecommunications.
The UN noted at the end of the afternoon “fighting and troop movements while both sides have pledged not to seek to take the military advantage before the entry into force of the truce”.
Run away, see a doctor or restore the water
To revive services and hospitals and restock humanitarian stocks and looted or bombed markets, the American and Saudi mediators announced that they had obtained, after two weeks of negotiations, a one-week truce.
Both sides said they wanted to respect it, but in Khartoum, residents said they saw no preparations.
“We see no sign that the FSR, who are still occupying the streets, are preparing to leave them”, reported during the day, Mahmoud Salaheddine, a resident of Khartoum.
If the army controls the air, it has few men in the center of the capital, while the RSF, they occupy the ground in Khartoum. Many residents accuse them of looting their homes or setting up headquarters there.
A dozen ceasefires have already been promised and immediately violated in the East African country, one of the poorest in the world.
Despite everything, Khaled Saleh, in the suburbs of Khartoum, wants to believe it.
“With a ceasefire, running water can be restored and I can finally see a doctor for my diabetes and hypertension,” he says.
Othman al-Zein, a trader in Darfur, the western region of the country worst hit by fighting with the capital, also hopes to find a way out.
“If the truce holds everywhere in Sudan, which I doubt, I will leave Nyala”, in South Darfur, he says, “to take shelter and save my savings”.
Because, in addition to stray bullets, the Sudanese fear looting.
While 25 million of the 45 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid, according to the UN, food is becoming increasingly scarce, banks are closed and most agri-food factories have been destroyed or looted.
“We are all hungry, the children, the old, everyone is suffering from the war. We have no more water,” said Souad al-Fateh, a resident of Khartoum. “The two sides really need to come to an agreement. »
“Monitoring mechanism”
Frightened and hungry, thousands of Sudanese or refugees in Sudan leave the country every day. Their number in Chad “is increasing very quickly” and is around 90,000, the UN was alarmed on Monday, which had 76,000 three days earlier. If the conflict continues, a million more Sudanese could flee to neighboring countries which fear a contagion of violence.
Doctors continue to warn about the dramatic fate of hospitals: in Khartoum, as in Darfur, they are almost all out of order. Those which have not been bombed have no more stocks or are occupied by belligerents.
Humanitarians are calling for secure corridors and, this time, assure Riyadh and Washington, there will be “a ceasefire monitoring mechanism” bringing together representatives of both sides as well as the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Before the Security Council in New York, the representative of Sudan to the UN, loyal to General Burhane, accused the FSR of all the abuses recorded since April 15.
General Daglo referred his accusations to the army in an audio recording posted online. He calls on his men to fight “until victory or martyrdom”.
The UN envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he was “taken by surprise” by the fighting launched even though the two generals were supposed to meet to discuss democratic transition.
In 2021, they led a putsch together, interrupting the democratic transition launched after 30 years of Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship.
The two men then divided on the question of the integration of the FSR into the regular army.
On Friday, General Burhane sacked General Daglo as number two in military power, replacing him with Malik Agar. This former rebel who had signed peace with Khartoum in 2020 met Monday in Juba the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, traditional mediator of conflicts in Sudan.