2023-05-01 03:00:01
An “unprecedented” situation in Sudan: faced with the persistence of fighting in Khartoum and despite the extension of a truce admittedly little respected, the UN decided on Sunday to send a senior official to the region “immediately”.
Millions of Sudanese remain trapped in shelling and gunfire since the April 15 outbreak of a ruthless power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s army and his number two, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), feared paramilitaries.
“The scale and speed at which events are unfolding in Sudan (are) unprecedented,” said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who decided to immediately send his responsible for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths.
“I am on my way (…) to study how we can provide immediate aid” to the inhabitants, said Mr. Griffiths on Sunday in a press release, for whom the “humanitarian situation is reaching a breaking point” in the country. .
The massive looting of humanitarian offices and warehouses has “depleted most of our stocks. We are looking for quick ways to bring in and distribute” additional supplies, explained the senior UN official, according to whom the “obvious solution” is to “stop the fight”.
A few hours before the expiry of a three-day ceasefire on Sunday at midnight (2200 GMT), the two rivals announced its extension, concluded “under the mediation of the United States and Saudi Arabia”, a specified the Sudanese army.
A first plane loaded with eight tonnes of aid and which should be able to treat 1,500 people landed on Sunday in Port Sudan, 850 km east of Khartoum, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The war left 528 dead and 4,599 injured, according to largely underestimated official figures. Both sides accuse each other of violating the truce.
Sunday evening, the fighting continued and the fighter jets continued to fly over Khartoum and Omdurman, its northern suburbs, according to witnesses on the spot.
“There is very heavy fighting and gunfire,” a witness told AFP.
As the fighting has raged for more than two weeks, residents of the capital, when not fleeing, remain barricaded, trying to survive despite shortages of food, water and electricity.
Khartoum authorities have given “leave until further notice” to officials in the capital, while the police say they are deployed in the city to prevent looting.
– Diplomatic efforts –
Most of the country’s hospitals are out of service. For those still functioning, “the situation is untenable” because there is a lack of equipment, Majzoub Saad Ibrahim, a doctor in Ad-Damir, north of Khartoum, told AFP.
The UN lists 75,000 internally displaced people. At least 20,000 have fled to Chad, 6,000 to the Central African Republic and thousands more to South Sudan and Ethiopia. In total, up to 270,000 people could flee the fighting which affects 12 of the 18 states of this country of 45 million inhabitants, one of the poorest in the world.
Several countries, including France, Germany and the United States, have evacuated their nationals and other foreigners. Canada, however, halted its evacuations “due to the unsafe conditions”.
On the diplomatic front, Saudi Foreign Minister Fayçal ben Farhane received an emissary from General Burhane on Sunday.
And neighboring Egypt called for an Arab League meeting on Monday to “discuss Sudan”.
For the experts at the Carnegie Middle East Center, General Daglo is trying to buy time: “the longer he can hold his positions in Khartoum, the greater his weight will be at the negotiating table.”
– “Armed tribes” –
According to the UN, a hundred people have been killed since Monday in West Darfur, a region marked by the bloody civil war of the 2000s.
The UN chief warned of a “terrible” situation with “tribes now trying to arm themselves”.
As the humanitarian drama worsens, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has stopped “almost all of (its) activities” because of the violence.
At the head of the Janjawid militiamen, General Daglo, known as “Hemedti”, had carried out the scorched earth policy in Darfur, on the orders of Omar el-Bashir, the former dictator overthrown in 2019 by the street.
The war that started in 2003 left about 300,000 dead and nearly 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN. The Janjawid officially gave birth in 2013 to the FSR, a paramilitary auxiliary to the army.
Today rivals, Generals Burhane and Daglo had nevertheless joined forces during the 2021 putsch to oust the civilians with whom they had shared power since the fall of Bashir.
But differences then appeared and, for lack of agreement on the integration of the FSR into the army, degenerated into open war.
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