A massacre near Khartoum and no one is taking responsibility for the fierce fratricidal struggle that Sudan has suffered since April 15 and that is bringing it closer to full-scale civil war. Between 22 and 31 people, according to sources, died Saturday under the bombs in the city of Omdurman, a neighbor of the capital, in one of the worst attacks on civilians since the conflict between rival generals began. The country’s army denied being the author of the bombing.
The paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FSR) insisted yesterday to Efe that it has no intention of withdrawing from positions in Khartoum or any other region of Sudan amid an increase in violence in a conflict that has lasted almost three months.
António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, warned that Sudan is close to “a civil war on a large scale”, while the clashes continued yesterday in the capital without giving the population a break. The conflict no longer directly threatens the balance of the country, made small, but that of the entire region, as Farhan Haq, Guterres’ spokesman, analyzed yesterday. The UN is concerned about the escalation of violence.
Egypt has agreed to host an urgent summit on Thursday to calm spirits. All the statements and movements warn of a conflict that may have deep and poisonous roots, especially for the civilian population.
Chaos has taken over Sudan from the strong discrepancies between the head general Abdel Fattah Burhan and the rival, also general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the aforementioned FSR paramilitary group. The confrontation between the two figures originates from the alliance they both forged to carry out a coup d’état a year and a half ago, in 2021, and in this way overthrow the transitional government endorsed by the West. The coup dashed the population’s hopes of moving towards a democratic model longed for by the population, which had risen against the longtime autocrat Omar al-Baixir in April 2019. For weeks, the streets of both Khartoum and other Sudanese cities have become battlefields.
The Minister of Health, Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, commented a few days ago that the escalation of violence since mid-April has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people and at least twice as many injured. The number of fatalities, however, is likely to be much higher than officially declared and there are more than 11,000 injured, according to data managed by the World Health Organization. Almost three million people (out of a country of 45 million) have left their homes to seek refuge in safer areas of the country.
“The armed forces clarify that the Air Force did not engage any hostile targets in Omdurman yesterday,” the army said in a statement a day after rival SFR militias reported the deaths of “more than 31 people”. . The situation in the area makes counting difficult.
The countries facing Sudan – Egypt, Libya, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Eritrea – will hold a summit on Thursday to address “ways to end the conflict” and how to mitigate the “negative repercussions” of the war in Sudanese territory, which has caused a wave of refugees and heightened insecurity concerns in the region. The meeting was called by the Egyptian president, Abdul Fattah al-Sissi, in order to “create a common vision for the neighboring countries of Sudan”.
