The human toll, still very provisional, amounts to more than 420 dead and 3,700 injured, according to estimates from the World Health Organization communicated on Saturday.
Thousands of refugees and a catastrophic humanitarian situation. More than a week after the start of fighting in Sudan on April 15, the country is plunged into chaos. The army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, ruler of Sudan since the putsch of 2021, faces the paramilitaries of his deputy who has become a rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces (FSR).
>> Clashes in Sudan: follow the latest news live with franceinfo
While various international actors, including the UN, are calling for an end to the fighting, the army announced on Friday 21 April that it had “agreed to a three-day ceasefire” on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. This pause in hostilities was not respected by either side. Assessment of the fighting, management of the humanitarian crisis, evacuation of foreign nationals… Franceinfo takes stock of the situation in the country.
France, like many countries, has begun to evacuate its nationals
It is time to flee for a large part of the foreign citizens and diplomats stuck in Sudan. On Saturday, 91 Saudis and around 60 nationals from other countries arrived in Jeddah, a port city in Saudi Arabia, according to Saudi state television. This was the first evacuation operation since the violence began.
The United States evacuated its diplomatic personnel from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, during a helicopter operation which took place “without incident”, announced President Joe Biden on Saturday evening. A “just under a hundred” people, including several foreign diplomats, were evacuated. The departure of the other American nationals, who would be several hundred, is not planned “For now”. For its part, the European Union is stepping up contacts to evacuate by land some 1,500 nationals caught in the fighting.
France, for its part, announced on Sunday that it had brought nearly 100 people out of the country during a “rapid evacuation operation” of its nationals. A hundred others are yet to follow, according to the Quai d’Orsay. “A first plane has already left Khartoum and should reach Djibouti around 6 p.m. [dimanche]”, while a second is “already in the area and should take off at 5:30 p.m.”, said the ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Armed Forces. Each plane carries around 100 people on board, the ministries said, emphasizing “extreme complexity” evacuation operations, which could last another day or two. The French community in Sudan counts “250 people”explained Sunday on franceinfo the spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay, “but not all nationals wish to leave the country”.
The United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey have also announced that they have undertaken the evacuation of their nationals in recent years. hours. South Korea and Japan, for their part, scheduled Friday to send military planes to carry out the evacuations. In Indonesia, the government say take “all necessary measures” and India ensures finally work “working closely with various partners to ensure the safe movement of stranded Indians”.
On TwitterGeneral Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, at the head of the FSR, affirmed that his forces were ready “to provide the necessary facilities to help foreign citizens and communities to pass to places of safety”.
An already heavy human toll and thousands of displaced people
The human toll, still very provisional, amounts to more than 420 dead and 3,700 injured, according to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO). communicated on Saturday (in English). “There were 14 attacks on health personnel, killing eight people and injuring two”the statement said. “Doctors are often unable to access the injured and the injured cannot reach the facilities,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter.
.@WHO estimates that many lives could have been saved in #Sudan if basic access to haemorrhage control was available to people harmed in the ongoing fighting. But paramedics, frontline nurses & doctors are often unable to access the wounded & the injured cannot reach facilities.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) April 23, 2023
On Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, announced the death of one of its humanitarian workers, victim of an exchange of fire south of El Obeid. Earlier, three World Food Program (WFP) staff were killed in western Darfur on the first day of fighting on April 15. At the same time, theUN denounces “looting, attacks and sexual violence against humanitarian workers”which would take place since the beginning of the conflict.
According to Jérôme Tubiana, researcher specializing in Sudan and adviser to the operations of Médecins sans frontières (MSF), who spoke at the microphone of franceinfo on Sunday, the humanitarian workers who lost their lives in this conflict “rather seem to be collateral victims”, as in any conflict, but “NGOs can be targets”, he nuances.
This violence has already displaced tens of thousands of people to other regions of Sudan, or to Chad and Egypt. Before the fighting, Cairo was already hosting nearly five million Sudanese fleeing poverty or violence, while the two countries have a free movement agreement, recalls the BBC (article in English).
A complex humanitarian situation
In this country of 45 million inhabitants, more than a third of the population suffered from hunger even before the start of the fighting between the regular army and the paramilitaries of the FSR, according to the WFP. Living conditions are probably worse in Darfur, the scene of a terrible conflict in the 2000s and where the fighting is particularly violent, reports RFI. The cessation of operations by most humanitarian organizations, targeted by the fighting, could well further aggravate an already very tense situation.
“The other problem is the lack of medicines and equipment”, laments Jérôme Tubiana. On Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its office in the Darfur region and a warehouse storing medicine and aid north of Khartoum had been looted, reports the New York Times (article in English reserved for subscribers). Fuel and food are also scarce in the country. Finally, on Sunday, internet and telephone services were down over a large part of the territory, reports The Guardian (article reserved for subscribers).