The fighting is so intense and taking place in so many different parts of the country at once, that Sudan could be dangerously close to full-blown civil war. The regular army and the paramilitary group Forces de Suport RÃ pid (FSR) have been fighting in an open armed confrontation since Saturday. Both sides blame each other for having to defend themselves from the other’s attack. With corpses in the streets and thousands of civilians hiding in their homes, the country descends into chaos.
The reputable Sudanese Central Medical Committee reported yesterday that during the first 48 hours of fighting, about 56 civilians would have died and there would be about 600 wounded (some of them combatants), some of them doomed to almost certain death by the seriousness of their condition and the impossibility of carrying out medical transfers in some streets of the main cities immersed in violence or blocked by one of the two sides.
Dozens of servicemen have already died, the doctors’ committee said, without giving a specific figure due to a lack of first-hand information from the hospitals where these bodies have been taken.
Precisely the Red Cross has sent a series of messages warning about the maintenance of fighting in the country’s densely populated areas, which further accentuates the danger for the civilian population.
Precisely with the aim of mitigating some of these dangers and being able to evacuate people in a situation of risk, a three-hour truce was declared yesterday afternoon, but the degree of follow-up is unknown.
The country’s capital, Khartoum, is one of the scenes where the fighting is most intense and where a propaganda battle is also being waged. The FSR say they have control of the airport, while the army denies it. Something similar happens with the headquarters of the Army Command, which has been heavily attacked by the paramilitaries – dense columns of smoke were seen yesterday, coming from the building -, although the regular troops assure that they are holding it under your control
According to sources cited by Reuters, the army would be gaining a certain military advantage after numerous air attacks carried out on FSR bases.
In this atmosphere of chaos took place the death of three employees of the World Food Program in the Darfur region, an area where it is believed that the clashes are being particularly harsh. This body, dependent on the UN, has informed that until further notice its operations are completely paralyzed in Sudan.
These types of situations threaten even more the lives of civilians locked in buildings where they have been surprised by the fighting. People are known to be locked in schools, shops and offices. Power cuts are constant.
A Catalan aid worker, Jofre Rocabert, an analyst with the Norwegian Council for Refugees, was about to start his return journey when he got stuck in Sudan on Saturday. Rocabert is hiding in a premises of his organization from where, miraculously and thanks to solar panels, he keeps some electrical equipment running and was able to be interviewed yesterday by the radio station RAC1.
“We try not to make noise so as not to attract attention, which is why we have given up using the electric generator. Throughout the morning, neither the shots nor the bombings have stopped”, explained the aid worker.
But the list of personal situations in a very delicate situation is very long. “We are afraid, we haven’t slept for 24 hours because of the noise and the shaking of the house. We are worried about running out of water and food, and medicine for my diabetic father,” Huda, a young resident of southern Khartoum, told Reuters.
International efforts are currently focused on getting both sides to decree a suspension of hostilities. At the height of the struggle are two people who seem to be irreconcilable enemies: the leader of the FSR, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and the head of the Sudanese Army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. It seems that both want to take positions in the face of the arrival of democracy in the country and eventual elections.
Despite the will of countries such as Egypt or South Sudan, which have offered to act as mediators, Sudan’s representative in the Arab League, Al-Sadiq Omar Abdallah, asked the rest of the organization’s countries that they do not interfere. “We recommend that the matter be left to the Sudanese so that they can resolve it among themselves”, he said.
