(Khartoum) Explosions shook Khartoum on Tuesday on the fourth day of the conflict in Sudan where the situation remains chaotic, despite growing international calls for an end to hostilities which have already killed nearly 200 people.
In the sky of the capital, the planes of the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, de facto leader of the country since the putsch of 2021, try to overcome the intense fire from the armored paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF ) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, known as “ Hemedti ”, his deputy for the coup d’etat who has become his sworn enemy since Saturday.
Despite calls from the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Japan, the UN and the United States “to end the violence immediately”, the fighting continues. Men in fatigues and sometimes turbaned like the nomads of Darfur reign terror in Sudan.
On Tuesday, General Daglo announced on Twitter that he had approved “ a 24-hour ceasefire ”, “ a declaration by the rebellion aimed at concealing its imminent defeat ”, immediately denounced the army in a denial published on Facebook.
The inhabitants remain cloistered at home without electricity or running water and see their food stocks melting. And the few grocery stores open warn that they will not last much longer without restocking.
Exhaustion awaits the inhabitants of the capital, “ we haven’t slept for four days ”, Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem, 37, told AFP.
She specifies staying “inside” with her family, for fear of the incessant bombardments and street fights which since Saturday have claimed more than 185 lives according to the UN and prompted several NGOs and UN agencies to suspend all aid.
In a country where hunger affects more than one in three inhabitants, humanitarians and diplomats say they can no longer work. Three World Food Program (WFP) employees were killed and aid stocks looted in Darfur (West). On Monday, an American diplomatic convoy came under fire and the European Union ambassador was “ attacked in his residence ” in Khartoum.
The UN lists 1,800 injured. They are struggling to access hospitals, fearing stray bullets or military and paramilitary bombardments in the heart of the residential area in Khartoum and its suburbs.
In Darfur, stronghold of General Daglo and thousands of his men who carried out atrocities there during the war launched in 2003, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) announces that it has received 183 wounded in three days in its last functional hospital. “ A majority of civilians, including many children ”, reports the NGO.
In Khartoum, columns of thick black smoke rise above army and paramilitary headquarters as a few civilians venture outside in search of food or a generator still fueled with oil to recharge a phone or battery.
Impossible to know which force controls what. The two camps say in press releases that they hold the airport, the presidential palace and the headquarters of the general staff.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with the two generals on Tuesday and underlined in a tweet “ the importance of ensuring the safety of diplomatic personnel and humanitarian workers ”.
But the two men now seem to no longer want to back down in this war that has become “existential” for their camps, according to experts.
The army never stops denouncing “ a coup ” by “rebels supported by foreigners ” when Hemedti declares to fight “ for freedom, justice and democracy ”.
This slogan of the “revolution” of 2019 was until recently still chanted in the street by pro-democracy activists wanting to end military power, almost a constant in Sudan since independence in 1956.
The conflict between the two generals, latent for weeks, exploded when they were forced to announce their plan to integrate the FSR into the regular troops. Unable to agree on a timetable and the conditions of recruitment, they let the guns speak.
For political scientist Amr Chobaki, “ the current situation is the result of the errors of the Bashir regime and the transition period which should have, after the fall of Bashir (in 2019), discussed the unification of the armed forces ”.
“The civilians wanted to dismantle the old regime, but what was dismantled were the political forces and the army,” he told AFP.
The big Egyptian neighbor is multiplying initiatives for “ a return to the negotiating table ”. He called the two generals and on Monday evening President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi convened an unusual Defense Council.