The alert is given by the UN. This Sunday, July 9, the institution warned that Sudan was “on the verge of a total civil war potentially destabilizing for the entire region”, on the borders of the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, the areas already plagued by violence before the start of the clashes that have shaken the country for three months.
This declaration took place the day after the death of dozens of civilians in an air force raid on a residential area of the Sudanese capital. In a video posted online by the Khartoum state health ministry, bodies lie on the ground, some with shredded limbs protruding from hastily thrown sheets to cover them. Several are women.
The bombardment, which occurred on Saturday in the district of Dar al-Salam, in Omdurman, the northwestern suburbs of Khartoum, left “22 dead and a large number of injured among civilians”, according to the Ministry of Health. For their part, the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), the paramilitaries at war against the army since April 15, denounced “the tragic loss of more than 31 lives and many wounded”.
Nearly 3,000 dead recorded in three months of war
In almost three months of war between the FSR of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo and the regular troops, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, nearly 3,000 dead have been recorded. But this assessment is very underestimated, bodies still strewing the streets being inaccessible. Since the beginning of the war on April 15, many residents have denounced the exactions of the paramilitaries while accusing the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane of not protecting them.
The latter was only filmed twice with his men, and General Daglo only appeared for a few seconds in a video shot by his troops. The two men only intervene by sound messages or interposed media. Nearly three million Sudanese have been forced to leave their homes – including more than 600,000 abroad, mainly Egypt in the north and Chad in the west – as the abuses from both sides are increasing.
Farhan Haq, a spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, denounced this Sunday “a total lack of respect for humanitarian law and human rights”, particularly in Darfur, a region martyred in the 2000s again in the heart of fights. In this vast area of western Sudan, where the UN lists possible “crimes against humanity” and where tribal fighters and armed civilians have joined the two warring sides, the fighting has taken on an “ethnic dimension “, says the UN. Residents report “executions” based on ethnicity.
A city attacked by the FSR
Leaving from the heart of the capital, the fighting, air raids and looting that follow relentlessly have reached Darfur as well as Kordofan, south of Khartoum, and the Blue Nile, bordering Ethiopia to the south. In the night from Saturday to Sunday, residents again reported to AFP fighting in El-Obeid, capital of North Kordofan.
RSF paramilitaries, at war with the army for power in Sudan, also attacked a town south of Khartoum on Friday. The FSR “looted banks and public buildings” in the town of Bara, 50 kilometers northeast of El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, one of them told the AFP. El-Obeid, 350 km south of Khartoum, is strategic because it is a logistical and commercial node, notably with an airport and huge storage warehouses for foodstuffs and export products, such as gum arabic.
On Tuesday July 4, a fighter plane was shot down in Khartoum, where clashes and artillery fire targeted several districts of the capital, according to witnesses. “We saw pilots parachuting as the plane dived towards the ground,” one told AFP. A source within the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (FSR) told AFP that the FSR had shot down the army plane. The FSR said they “arrested the pilot after he landed” and accused the army of “heinous massacres” in the Khartoum region.
Senior UN officials denounced Wednesday, July 5, the increase in violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls in Sudan. In a joint statement, the heads of several UN agencies responsible for human rights, refugees (UNHCR), children (UNICEF), women (UN Women) or health (WHO) said they were “shocked and condemn the information reporting growing reports of gender-based violence in Sudan, including conflict-related sexual violence against women and displaced and refugee women”.
Igad meeting this Monday
The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has received since the beginning of the fighting “credible information on 21 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence against at least 57 women and girls”, according to the press release, which specifies that in one of the cases “at least 20 women would have been raped during the same attack”.
To attempt a way out of the crisis, the UN pleads for the proposals of Igad, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development. This East African bloc will bring together this Monday, July 10 in Addis Ababa leaders of the four countries involved in the Sudanese issue: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan. An Igad official told AFP that the two warring generals had been invited, but said they could send lieutenants to Addis Ababa. Negotiations led by Americans and Saudis have so far only resulted in temporary truces, which are almost never respected.