More than 185 people died and at least 1,800 were injured in Sudan by the intense fighting that for three days between the army and a powerful paramilitary group, the United Nations reported on Monday.
In the sky over Khartoum, the planes of General Abdel Fatah al Burhan, the country's de facto leader since a 2021 coup, are trying to overcome the fire of paramilitary armored vehicles led by his number two, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as "Hemedti".
On Monday, the European Union denounced that its ambassador "was attacked in his own residence", although he is well. On the same day, a US diplomatic convoy was fired upon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. "All our people are safe and unharmed," Blinken told reporters, calling the action "insane."
A smell of gunpowder has been released since Saturday in the city, where columns of black smoke rise. The inhabitants remain barricaded in their houses, most without running water or electricity.
More than 185 people have been killed and 1,800 injured since the clashes began, said the head of the UN mission in the country, Volker Perthes. "The situation is very changeable. It is difficult to assess in which direction the balance is evolving," Perthes said from Khartoum.
The official doctors' union had previously counted at least 97 civilian deaths, about half in Khartoum, and "dozens" of combatants killed. He also estimated the wounded at 942.
At least two hospitals in the capital were evacuated "while rockets and bullets riddled their walls," warned the doctors, who say they have run out of blood bags and medical supplies.
In addition, numerous NGOs and UN agencies suspended their activities due to the looting and "serious violations" that occurred against their staff.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, urged the two generals to "immediately cease hostilities", which could be "devastating for the country and the entire region".
The heads of G7 diplomacy, meeting in Japan, also urged an "immediate" stop to the fighting and the American Antony Blinken stressed in conversations with the two clashing generals "the urgency of reaching a ceasefire."
The conflict pits General Burhan, head of the army, and General Daglo, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who in October 2021 together carried out a coup against civil power.
Since Saturday the shootings have not stopped and the aviation has targeted, in the heart of Khartoum, the headquarters of the RSF, a group of ex-militiamen who participated in the war in the Darfur region and later became official army reinforcements.
"Burhan is bombing civilians from the air, we will hunt him down and bring him to justice," General Daglo said on Twitter in English. For its part, the army stated on Facebook that the moment of final victory is drawing near.
On Monday it was still impossible to tell who controlled what. The RSF claimed to have seized the airport and entered the presidential palace, which the army denied. The armed forces say they have in their hands the headquarters of their General Staff, one of the main power complexes in Khartoum.
State television broadcasts images and statements by the army, which claims to have regained ground in many places.
Doctors and humanitarian organizations warned that in some areas of Khartoum electricity and water are cut off and that there are blackouts in operating rooms. The patients, some of them children, and their families "have no food or water," a pro-democratic network of doctors declared.
The UN, which had proposed a humanitarian truce of a few hours on Sunday, declared itself "extremely disappointed" that the belligerents had not respected it, and denounced the "intensification of fighting" on Monday.
The World Food Program (WFP) suspended aid on Sunday after the deaths of three members of its staff in fighting in the province of Darfur (west), despite the fact that more than a third of the 45 million Sudanese need assistance. humanitarian.
"It is the first time in the history of Sudan since its independence [in 1956] that there is such a level of violence in the center, in Khartoum," Kholood Khair, founder of the Confluence Advisory research center in Khartoum, told AFP.
The capital "has always been the safest place in Sudan" but now "there is fighting everywhere, even in densely populated areas, because the belligerents believe that a high civilian death toll will deter the other side," he added.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
