Between 10,000 and 20,000 people have fled the war in Sudan to take refuge in Chad, according to data released by the UN. The war entered yesterday in the sixth day of fighting and shooting in the center of the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, and other areas of the country, while yesterday many of its inhabitants tried to flee the city on the eve of the Eid al Fitr ( end of fasting), which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The situation in Khartoum and its sister cities, Omdurman and Bahri, is extreme because since the start of the clashes between two rival generals, everything has been lacking: running water, electricity, medicine and food.
Armed clashes between the Sudanese army and the powerful Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group have left 330 dead and 3,200 injured since Saturday, according to the WHO.
“It is an unprecedented situation, very serious, chaotic. No one expected such intense fighting to suddenly break out in the main cities of the country,†said the executive head of Doctors Without Borders in East Africa, Jairo González. The Sudanese Doctors Union assured that 70% of hospitals in Khartoum and other affected areas are out of service. None fully function within the capital. “The sanitary collapse was reached on day one of the conflict,” the Spanish aid worker stressed to Efe. Several UN organizations and agencies have been forced to suspend their operations in a country where more than one in three people go hungry in normal times.
Fighting continued in the capital yesterday, after both sides again ignored a 24-hour truce they agreed to on Wednesday, for the second day in a row. “At 4:30 a.m. we were awakened by the sounds of air raids. We closed all the doors and windows because we were afraid of a stray bullet passing by,” a Khartoum resident told Afp. However, a few tens of kilometers from the capital, life goes on and houses are opened to house the displaced. Thousands of people try to escape on foot or by car under crossfire. Many walked for hours, among corpses and charred vehicles. “Life is impossible in Khartoum,” said Alawya al-Tayeb, 33, on the way south. “I did everything so that my children would not see the corpses.”
Also yesterday some 170 Egyptian soldiers who were being held by the rebels were evacuated in three planes to Cairo, in what is considered a communication gesture between the two contenders.
