There are reports of big fighting near the capital of Sudan, Khartoum. Many civilians who were forced to leave their homes because of the war live there.
People who saw it happening say that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) entered al-Jazira state in a big way.
It was a pretty safe place.
Since the fighting started in April, about seven million people from Sudan had to leave their homes.
Less than a week ago, local leaders said that the fighting groups in Sudan had agreed to meet in person to talk and try to stop the fighting.
However, the fighting is getting worse and the people who have been forced to leave their homes are preparing to run away to save themselves once more.
Fighting for control of Khartoum made almost 500,000 people move south to al-Jazira.
However, the RSF launched a big attack and now there is fighting near the state capital, Wad Madina, with fighter jets flying overhead.
This area grows a lot of food, but because of the war, many people who need help getting food cannot get it.
Tag: Khartoum
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Sudan violence reportedly expanding to former safe haven
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‘Life in Sudan has turn into living hell’ – Survivors
Seven months after Sudan’s civil war began, things are getting worse for many people in the capital city, Khartoum. Some who fled the city at the beginning of the war are also having a hard time surviving.
Abdul-Aziz Hussein – not his real name for safety – decided to stay in Khartoum in April. He didn’t expect the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to keep fighting for so long.
“We are still surrounded and the fighting is continuing,” he tells me when I call him.
The RSF have come into the area and caused a lot of trouble, while the army is attacking their positions in the neighborhood. Death may happen at any time.
Around 5,000 Sudanese people have died in fighting between two parts of the military, and many more have been hurt.
The 45-year-old teacher wants to leave with his wife and three kids. He really wants to go. They almost moved last month, but the fighting near their home in the Kalakla suburb was too strong.
The place is empty and quiet, the family hasn’t had any food for two days and it’s difficult to find water. According to Mr Hussein, electricity is not easy to get.
When I call again, Mr Hussein says that violent soldiers are stealing from stores and homes.
He says it feels like living in a really bad place.
The UN says that the strong fighting in Khartoum and Darfur is making it hard to deliver aid.
More than five million people had to leave their homes because of the fighting, and 24. 7 million need urgent help.
Many people don’t have clean water, which makes them more likely to get sick with cholera and other diseases.
The UN’s deputy special representative in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, says we need a break in fighting so we can give food and help to people in need and see how much help they need.
“Most importantly, we need the fighting to stop for good. ” We want the fighting to stop so we can deliver help, and the people in Sudan can go back to their regular lives.
A few short breaks in fighting were agreed at the beginning of the war to help people, but efforts to make long-lasting peace are not making much progress. Unicef’s person in charge in Sudan, Mandeep O’Brien, told the BBC that a big problem where people need help is coming soon.
“If the war keeps going, we think things will be really bad by the end of the year. ”
Even people who fled from Khartoum to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, are having a hard time staying alive.
I met Hawa Suleiman in a shelter in the port city. She was trying to make food for her five children from the little bit of wheat she had, but there wasn’t enough.
They get one meal a day from a charity in Qatar. Suleiman shares it with her kids so they can have breakfast. Without a fridge, the food can go bad and make her kids ill.
She and her kids ran away from Omdurman, the city near Khartoum, when the fighting began on April 14th. Bombs were dropping while they ran away, and she and her husband got separated in all the confusion. We haven’t heard from him and we don’t know if he’s alive or dead.
The family traveled 1,000km to Port Sudan and tried to leave, but were told they couldn’t because the boats were only for people from other countries.
Ms Suleiman found out that she didn’t have anyone to help her. When one of her kids got sick from bad food, she could only afford medicine because someone kind helped pay for half of it.
“MsSuleiman said the doctor cried when she saw how sick we were. ” “We are very tired. ” We are suffering too much.
Many different people from different countries are also suffering because of the war, including Syrians, Pakistanis, Indians, and a lot of refugees from South Sudan. In Port Sudan, many families are living in a crowded shelter that used to be a university dormitory.
Abiol is part of that group. She had run away from South Sudan before and now lives in a camp in Khartoum in a place called al-Haj Yousif.
“I wanted to go back to my country, but there was a war in Khartoum, so we had to move to Port Sudan,” she explains.
“It’s like destiny has decided that we will spend our whole lives in refugee camps. ”
Peter, who fled from Congo, was studying at a university in Khartoum before the fighting started. He says the living conditions in the Port Sudan dormitory are very bad, so he sells charcoal to have a slightly better life.
The conflict has also hurt aid workers. 900 times, UN workers have been in dangerous situations, and 19 of them have died. This means it’s the most unsafe place in the world for people who help others.
At the same time, the UN is having trouble getting enough money to do its work in the country. They have only been able to raise enough money to cover a quarter of their $2. 6 billion humanitarian response plan.
Ms Nkweta-Salami says that not doing anything will be very expensive. “We ask our donors to support us and ask the parties to stop the fighting. ”Source: The Independent Ghana
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Armed men beat Medics in Sudan during Khartoum convoy attack
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has reported a disturbing incident in Sudan’s capital, where armed men attacked a convoy of medics, subjecting them to beatings and whippings.
The attack occurred while the medical team was en route to the Turkish Hospital located in the southern part of Khartoum on Thursday. During the assault, one of their vehicles was stolen.
Amidst the ongoing war that began in mid-April, only two hospitals remain operational in the southern part of the city. These hospitals, crucial for providing medical care to the affected population, are supported by MSF.
However, the violent power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over the past three months has wreaked havoc on medical facilities in the city.
This recent attack not only endangers the lives and well-being of the medical staff but also poses a threat to the aid and support provided by MSF to these essential healthcare facilities.
Since April, over three million people across Sudan have been displaced from their homes, leaving them in dire circumstances. While many have fled the country, millions of others are still in Khartoum, facing immense challenges in accessing medical assistance and essential medicines.
In this critical situation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stands as one of the few international aid organizations that continue to support hospitals in Khartoum and Omdurman.
These hospitals have been operating under immense strain for decades. Despite the challenges, MSF has treated more than 1,600 patients in these facilities since the conflict began.
However, the charity is now facing the possibility of halting its crucial medical support due to a significant deterioration in security. Recent incidents have seen their staff being targeted, posing serious risks to their ability to continue their life-saving work.
In one such alarming incident on Thursday, armed men engaged in an altercation with an MSF convoy consisting of 18 people and four trucks carrying medical supplies.
During the encounter, the assailants not only assaulted the MSF team but also threatened the life of one of the drivers. Eventually, they made off with one of the vehicles, further complicating the already precarious situation.
The escalating security threats are jeopardizing the healthcare system’s survival in the region, leaving millions vulnerable and in urgent need of assistance.
“If an incident like this happens again, and if our ability to move supplies continues to be obstructed, then, regrettably, our presence in the Turkish Hospital will soon become untenable,” MSF’s Christophe Garnier said in a statement.
The confrontation took place not far from the hospital, where hundreds of patients, including those recently wounded in air strikes, are undergoing treatment.
“On a daily basis, this hospital receives around 15 war wounded patients, carries out lifesaving surgery and keeps patients with chronic diseases alive,” MSF said.
According to the AFP news agency, the hospital is in an area of the city controlled by the RSF.
Aerial bombardments have intensified in residential areas of Khartoum where the paramilitary fighters have their bases, it says.
Official figures put the number of dead in the conflict at around 3,000, but it is thought to be far higher.
Some estimates from the western region of Darfur, which have seen the worst of the violence, say the death toll in one city alone is 11,000.
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MSF in Khartoum at risk after the targeting of one of their convoys
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is contemplating the suspension of its crucial operations in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, due to a string of incidents where its personnel have been deliberately targeted.
The most recent incident occurred on Thursday when a convoy, transporting essential medical supplies to the Turkish Hospital in the southern part of the capital, was intercepted by a group of armed individuals, as reported by MSF in a press release.
“After arguing about the reasons for MSF’s presence, the armed men then aggressively assaulted our team, physically beating and whipping them, as well as detaining the driver of one of our vehicles.”
The life of the driver was then threatened and the vehicle was stolen.
The charity has said that its work at the Turkish Hospital is in “serious jeopardy” without safety guarantees.
“In order to save people’s lives, the lives of our staff who are there to carry out this life saving work must not be put at risk.
“If an incident like this happens again, and if our ability to move supplies continues to be obstructed, then, regrettably, our presence in the Turkish Hospital will soon become untenable,” Christophe Garnier, MSF’s emergencies manager for Sudan, said.
The hospital is only one of two operating in southern Khartoum, both of which MSF supports, the charity says.
There are very few other international charities working in the country.
But now “the organisation is beginning to think that its ongoing support may soon no longer be possible”.
As the three-month conflict between the army and a paramilitary force continues, the few remaining medical facilities in Khartoum are struggling to treat wounded patients.
MSF says it has treated over 1,600 war-wounded patients in the capital since April.
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22 dead in Khartoum due to air strike
Witnesses and an official report that a recent Sudanese army air strike on the capital resulted in the deaths of at least 22 people, with numerous others sustaining injuries.
Among the victims were women and children, as per accounts from eyewitnesses.
The airstrike targeted the Dar es Salaam district in Omdurman, situated on the opposite side of the Nile from the capital, Khartoum.
The attack occurred in the early hours of Saturday. Since April, the army and a paramilitary force have been engaged in a power struggle for control over the capital.
The conflict originated from a disagreement between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the army, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), regarding the country’s future direction.
A health official from Khartoum state, quoted by Reuters, confirmed that the airstrike resulted in the deaths of at least 22 people.
However, the RSF claimed that the death toll was 31, emphasizing that the strike caused significant damage to residential properties.
The situation in Sudan remains volatile and the loss of civilian lives is deeply tragic.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) currently holds control over significant parts of Khartoum, as well as its neighboring cities of Omdurman and Bahri. In response, the army has been conducting frequent artillery and air attacks in an attempt to dislodge the paramilitary fighters. However, it is believed that the air strike on Saturday may have resulted in one of the highest death tolls from a single attack.
The ongoing conflict, spanning twelve weeks, has left the civilian population in the capital in a state of fear and distress. Shops and markets remain closed, and the majority of medical facilities have ceased operations. The clashes have extended beyond the city, reaching the western Darfur region where ethnic violence has erupted.
Throughout the country, hundreds of people have lost their lives, and nearly three million individuals have been displaced from their homes. While some temporary ceasefires have been attempted, they have been short-lived.
The East African regional bloc, Igad, is making efforts to revive peace negotiations at a summit scheduled for Monday in Ethiopia. However, a spokesperson for General Burhan stated that he would not attend the meeting.
The situation in Sudan remains deeply concerning, with widespread violence and displacement impacting the lives of the civilian population.
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Sudan: Army plane shot down in Khartoum
Witnesses have reported that a fighter plane has been shot down in Khartoum on Tuesday, as fighting and artillery fire struck numerous districts in Sudan’s war-torn capital.
“We saw pilots parachuting as the plane dived towards the ground ,” said a witness in northern Khartoum. A source within the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (FSR) told AFP that the FSR had shot down the army plane.
The FSR said they had “arrested the pilot after he landed” in a statement, also accusing the army of “heinous massacres” in the Khartoum region.
The Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane , has been at war since April 15 with the paramilitaries of the FSR led by its former number two, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo .
The conflict has killed nearly 3,000 people, according to the NGO Acled, and 2.8 million displaced persons and refugees, according to the UN. A resident of Omdurman, in the northern suburbs of the capital, reported on Tuesday “violent clashes using various types of weapons”.
Other witnesses said they observed “airstrikes (near) the state television building”, which the RSF launched an attack on this week and used anti-aircraft missiles on Tuesday.
In the east of the capital, residents also reported clashes with machine guns.
The army also “launched rockets and heavy artillery” at RSF bases in the centre and north of the capital, a witness said. Homes were damaged and civilians were rushed to one of the few hospitals still operational, another added.
In Khartoum and the western Darfur region, the fighting mainly affected densely populated neighborhoods. The streets are littered with dead bodies and houses have been targeted by missiles, witnesses said.
Trapped by the fighting, civilians have had to ration water, food, electricity and medicine for almost three months.
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Sudan sees renewal of conflict as ceasefire ends
Violent confrontations have erupted across the capital of Sudan as a three-day ceasefire, which expired in the early morning, neared its end.
Eyewitnesses have reported clashes between the Sudanese army and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum.
Furthermore, there have been accounts of anti-aircraft fire during a military aircraft operation in Omdurman.
The most recent cessation of hostilities was facilitated by Saudi Arabia and the United States. However, similar to previous ceasefires, there have been reports of violations from both sides involved in the conflict.
The armed conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary RSF initially commenced in April and has continued to escalate.
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Kids at border camp in South Sudan die every day as they wait for aid
Kueaa Darhok struggles to navigate the sucking mud and deep puddles on his way to the communal cooking area at the heart of the transit camp he now calls home, his faded pants bagging over the top of borrowed rubber rain boots.
South Sudanese who have fled their country and refugees from Sudan wait there while charity workers and local women spoon through steel pots of lentils and porridge under his reassuring gaze and soft-spoken assurances.
Having South Sudanese ancestry, Darhok served as the principal of an English-language secondary school in Khartoum, the country’s capital, where he instructed students in works by renowned African writers like Chinua Achebe in an effort to instill in them, in his words, a sense of ethnic pride.
After fighting broke out over two months ago in Khartoum, he and his family made the terrifying journey back to South Sudan and he has become a community elder here at the camp.
Set up a week into the fighting in Sudan, when desperate families arrived seeking shelter, the Renk transit camp near the border of South Sudan and Sudan was not supposed to hold more than 3,000 people. It now houses more than double that. There are no sanitation facilities, not enough waterproof sheets and not enough food. Not enough of anything.
“I eat once a day, sometimes not even that,” Darhok says, keeping an eye on the meal distribution. “Most of the men here are the same, so that the most vulnerable – the women and children – can eat.”
Even then, Darhok says, not all those queuing up will get food, and they’ll return to expectant families empty-handed.
The UN estimates at least 860 people have been killed since fighting erupted on April 15 between Sudan’s Armed Forces and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
With 6,000 people injured across Sudan as of June 3, half a million people have fled the country and more than 1.4 million are internally displaced.
Blighted by decades of fighting both before and after independence from the Republic of Sudan, South Sudan was already Africa’s largest refugee crisis, with 2.2 million people displaced outside the country’s borders and 2.3 million internally displaced. Now at least 800,000 South Sudanese have been driven back by the fighting in Sudan.
A spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Renk, Charlotte Hallqvist told CNN that an average of 1,500 people have been arriving daily since the fighting began in Sudan, adding to the burden of a country where 75% of the population are in need of assistance.
Hallqvist says the UN’s emergency response was already critically underfunded, “and the new emergency is adding additional strain to already limited resources.”
To respond to the Sudan crisis in neighboring countries, the UN needs $566 million, with the South Sudan response alone in need of $96 million.
According to UNHCR figures, two months into the crisis, international donors have so far only contributed 10% of the total figure, and 15% of the overall Sudan regional emergency response.
On June 19, the United Nations, the governments of Egypt, Germany, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the European Union will convene a High-level Pledging Event to support the humanitarian response in Sudan and the region in a bid to drive up donor contributions.
For many here in Renk, it’s too late; the international community’s delayed response has already cost lives.
Malnutrition and unsanitary conditions are triggering an epidemic of communicable diseases, and every day, Darhok tells us, a little boy or girl dies.
A CNN team visiting the camp witnessed the burial of one boy, not quite two years old, who had died in the early hours of that morning from measles.
His mother and grandmother sat in shocked silence as men shoveled earth onto his grave at the local cemetery, pausing to plant a spindly wooden cross before heading back to their own tents and their own vulnerable families, carrying with them the specter of a death that could have been prevented.
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5 children among 17 killed in Sudan air strikes
Tragedy struck in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as seventeen individuals, including five children, lost their lives in an airstrike, according to officials.
The devastating attack occurred in the densely populated Yarmouk district, where twenty-five homes were destroyed on Saturday.
This deadly incident took place just a day after a high-ranking army general issued a threat to escalate attacks against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The conflict between the Sudanese army and the RSF erupted in mid-April due to a fierce power struggle within the country’s military leadership.
By early June, the RSF declared its complete control over Yarmouk, an area in the capital known for housing an arms manufacturing facility. However, the situation escalated further on Saturday with the tragic airstrike.
In an effort to mitigate the violence, the warring factions reached an agreement mediated by Saudi and US representatives. The agreement stipulated a 72-hour ceasefire set to commence on Sunday at 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT).
It is important to note that similar ceasefires in the past have not been effectively observed.
Precise figures on the number of people killed in the fighting are difficult to establish, but it is believed to be well over 1,000, including many civilians caught in the crossfire.
Roughly 2.2 million people have been displaced within the country and more than half a million are sheltering in neighbouring countries, according to the UN.
Several ceasefires have been announced to allow people to escape the fighting but these have not been observed.
The recent attack targeted civilians in Mayo, Yarmouk, and Mandela areas, according to the RSF. The army has not commented.
Since the hostilities began, tens of thousands of civilians have fled across the border into neighbouring Chad.
Doctors and hospitals there have been overstretched and struggling to cope.
The violence has also resurrected a two-decade-old conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
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17 people killed by airstrikes, including 5 children in Sudan
Officials report that an air strike in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, has killed seventeen people, including five children.
The walkout on Saturday in the heavily populated Yarmouk region resulted in the destruction of 25 homes.
The warning to intensify attacks against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces was made by a senior army officer the day before.
A savage power struggle inside the military hierarchy of the country led to fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF in the middle of April.
Nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed and many more injured, according to a doctors’ union.
Several ceasefires have been announced to allow people to escape the fighting but these have not been observed.
The recent attack targeted civilians in Mayo, Yarmouk, and Mandela areas, according to the RSF. The army has not commented.
Since the start of the conflict, tens of thousands of civilians have fled across the border into neighbouring Chad.
Doctors and hospitals there have been overstretched and struggling to cope.
The violence has also resurrected a two-decade-old conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
More on this story
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Fear reigns in several areas of the capital of Sudan – Observer
A Sudanese doctor has told the international media that the RSF paramilitaries are enforcing a reign of terror across the metropolis they rule.
Mohammed Gibbril said they were raiding and looting houses, taking hostages and patrolling the streets of Khartoum.
Some of those recruited to their fight against the Sudanese army were children.
Mr Gibbril said he had been severely beaten during one such raid last Monday.
Many similar claims have been made by other residents of Khartoum.
The RSF have said on Facebook that they’re ready for a new ceasefire with the army.
The latest truce, which ended on Sunday, was better respected than previous ceasefires, though fighting has again erupted with witnesses reporting warplanes in the skies over Khartoum, and gun and shellfire.
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Sudan’s 24-hour ceasefire begins amid severe humanitarian problems
Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum has experienced a period of relative calm during the initial hours of a 24-hour ceasefire. This ceasefire marks the latest effort to bring an end to the intense conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The United States and Saudi Arabia-brokered ceasefire took effect from 6am (04:00 GMT) on Saturday with hopes by the mediators that a pause in fighting will facilitate the safe passage of desperately needed humanitarian aid across the country.
“We have not been able to hear any sound of artillery shellings,” Morgan said on Saturday from Omdurman, located on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital.
The ceasefire is also hoped to halt the fighting that has been raging since April 15 when a rivalry between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo exploded into open warfare.
A string of previous ceasefires have fallen through with both sides accusing the other of violations.
The warring parties have agreed to abide by the ceasefire, Morgan said, but the shorter ceasefire when compared with others in the past is partly to test whether it will actually be honoured this time.
The US and Saudi Arabia said they shared “frustration” over the past violations, threatening to dismantle ceasefire talks if fighting continues.
Residents are waiting to see how the ceasefire will play out before they attempt to make a move, whether to stock up on basic commodities, or to try and leave Khartoum because of the continuing fighting, Morgan said.
“A one-day truce is much less than we aspire for,” a resident of Khartoum North, Mahmud Bashir, told the AFP news agency. “We look forward to an end to this damned war.”
In the week before the ceasefire, fighting ramped up around crucial army bases, with the RSF claiming to have taken control of an arms manufacturing complex in the southern part of the capital.
Residents also reported anti-aircraft missiles firing in southern Khartoum and the Sharg el-Nil district across the Nile, which came under air attack just before the ceasefire took effect.
“Many residents say that the situation is getting desperate. We’re talking about some residential areas where there are people remaining, but there’s a lack of access to basic necessities,” said Morgan.
Aid agencies are hoping to intervene to alleviate some of the shortages, but will need a guarantee of safe passage from the warring sides to reach some parts of the capital, she added.
Khartoum residents told Morgan they hoped the 24-hour truce would allow some humanitarian aid to come in, especially medical assistance for those who are desperately in need, including those injured in the fighting.
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Kenya’s diplomatic mission in Sudan closed as clashes intensify
The diplomatic mission of Kenya in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, has been closed as clashes intensify between the rival military forces.
The foreign ministry said the mission had remained open to support the evacuation of Kenyan citizens, but was now closed as it had come under threat from the fighting.
Nairobi has been supporting African initiatives to end the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
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18 killed after rockets hit Khartoum market
A market in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, was struck by rockets, resulting in the death of 18 people and leaving over 100 wounded, as reported by doctors and residents.
The attack occurred amidst ongoing conflicts between rival military forces, following the collapse of truce talks mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia.
The violence on Wednesday, which took place in the Mayo area in the south of Khartoum, involved artillery fire and aerial bombardment.
This incident marked the highest number of civilian casualties in a single event in the capital since the war began in April.
Violent clashes between SAF and RSF this Sunday in Khartoum, areas south of Al-Zariba, Al-Muwaileh and Fatasha. Also looting and robberies in market place.#Sudan #Soudan #sudan_update #SudanCrisis #KeepEyesOnSudan #Karthoum pic.twitter.com/DrVZdAOLk7
— AMANAR_ADVISOR (@amanar_advisor) April 30, 2023The official count of civilian deaths over the past seven weeks stands at least 883, although the actual number is believed to be much higher.
Local neighborhood organizations, involved in providing food and medicine to Khartoum’s residents, described the situation as catastrophic and appealed for the assistance of doctors and blood donations.
Due to the conflict occurring in urban areas, civilians remain in constant danger.
On Tuesday, the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), their rivals, had agreed to extend a humanitarian ceasefire deal brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia for an additional five days.
However, the army withdrew from the talks the following day, accusing the RSF of not adhering to the terms of the agreement.
The US stated that both sides had violated the ceasefire and expressed its willingness to mediate a truce once they were genuinely committed to ending the violence.
While the ceasefire allowed some urgent aid to reach approximately two million people, the ongoing insecurity hindered deliveries to many more and impeded efforts to restore essential services, according to a spokesperson from the US State Department.
The UN reports that 25 million people in Sudan, over half the country’s population, are currently in need of humanitarian aid and protection.
With the talks no longer in progress, there is a concern that the fighting may escalate. Heavy fire was reported on Thursday morning in Bahri and Omdurman, cities located across the River Nile from Khartoum.
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Over 1.3million displaced due to Sudan conflict – UN
The UN estimates that more than 1.3 million people have been forced from their homes as a result of the fighting in Sudan.
After more than six weeks of fighting, the Sudanese military and a potent paramilitary organisation are still engaged in combat.
Per the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) of the UN, over a million people have been compelled to leave their homes and relocate within the nation to safer locations.
An additional 320,000 people have fled to Egypt, South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, and Libya, which are nearby nations.
Clashes between rival forces even broke out today in Khartoum, despite a ceasefire being agreed on Monday – albeit a fragile one.
Sporadic fighting continued in several areas and residents reported hearing gunshots and explosions in central Khartoum, as well as areas close to military facilities in Omdurman.
Both sides blamed each other for violating the cease-fire.
Just five days ago, houses were left shaking after the capital was hit by airstrikes and the civil war has led to a collapse in law and order, with looting that, again, both sides have traded blame for.
Violence erupted on April 15 this year after months of escalating tensions between the military, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The situation has worsened an already existing humanitarian crisis and right now, stocks of food, cash, and essentials in the North African nation are rapidly dwindling.
Hopes of restoring the country’s fragile transition to democracy have been completely shattered by the conflict.
At least 863 civilians have already been killed, including at least 190 children, while more than 3,530 people have been wounded, according to the most recent data from the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate, which mainly tracks civilian casualties.
It has pushed the country to near collapse, with urban areas in Khartoum and its neighbouring city of Omdurman turning into battlegrounds.
Egypt is hosting the largest number of those who have fled, with at least 132,360 people, followed by Chad with 80,000 and South Sudan with more than 69,000, the agency added.
All but one of Sudan’s 18 provinces has experienced displacement, with Khartoum at the top of the list with about 70% of the total number of displaced people, according to the IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix.
The weeklong ceasefire was brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and was the latest international effort to push for humanitarian aid delivery to the conflict-torn country.
A joint statement from the US and Saudi Arabia yesterday evening warned that neither the Sudanese military nor the Rapid Support Forces observed the short-term ceasefire.
The fighting has exacerbated the already dire humanitarian conditions in Sudan. According to the UN, the number of people who need assistance this year has increased by 57% to reach 24.7 million people – more than half the country’s population.
The international body said it would need £2.1billion ($2.6bn) to provide them with much-needed humanitarian assistance.
Shortly after the civil war broke out, British nationals were desperately trying to escape in terrifying circumstances.
One student who managed to flee Khartoum likened scenes in the city to that of the horror movie The Purge, while another Brit risked being shot to walk four hours to an airstrip for an evacuation flight.
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Sudan ceasefire: Residents testify of peace in Khartoum
In the capital and two neighboring cities, the most recent ceasefire intended to put an end to Sudan’s destructive conflict appeared to be mainly holding.
For the first time in more than five weeks there appears to be relative peace, residents say.
But there have been some breaches of the truce in Khartoum, and across the River Nile in Bahri and Omdurman.
The military carried out air strikes minutes after the ceasefire came into force on Monday evening.
The air strikes, targeting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have since stopped.
However, sporadic artillery fire could still be heard in Khartoum, residents told AFP news agency.
The RSF controls much of Khartoum and the two other cities that make up Sudan’s greater capital.
The situation is also relatively calm in El Geneina and Nyala, two cities in the Darfur region which have also been badly affected by the conflict, AFP quotes witnesses as saying.
The violence began on 15 April, triggered by a power struggle between the leaders of the regular army and the RSF.
The US and Saudi Arabia have been brokering talks aimed at ending the conflict, which has forced more than one million people from their homes and has led to a breakdown in health services.
Previous ceasefires collapsed, but the US said the latest one was different as it included a monitoring mechanism.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said the monitoring would be “remote”, but did not give details.
“If the ceasefire is violated, we’ll know, and we will hold violators accountable through our sanctions and other tools at our disposal,” he added in a video message to the Sudanese people.
RSF commander Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – better known as Hemedti – issued a belligerent message just hours before the agreement was due to become effective.
He was recorded in an audio message saying his troops would not retreat “until we end this coup”.
Khartoum resident Moe Faddoul told the BBC that minutes into the ceasefire there were two heavy air strikes west of the city, where the military’s main airbase is.
“The house shook where I’m staying,” he said.
There were also skirmishes, but the fighting had since stopped, Mr Faddoul added.
He described the city as “almost a ghost town”.
Most residents had fled, no cars were on roads and only a few people were walking to look for basic necessities, Mr Faddoul said.
The army and RSF agreed to the ceasefire lasting for seven days, raising hopes that aid workers would be able to deliver much-needed food and medical supplies.
The US has announced $245m (£197m) in humanitarian aid to Sudan and neighbouring states, which are bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis triggered by the conflict.
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Warring factions in Sudan conflict agree to ceasefire for 7 days – US
A temporary ceasefire in Sudan has been agreed as fighting between two warring factions entered its sixth week.
Previous truce attempts between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have tended to collapse within minutes of beginning.
But the new deal will be enforced by a “ceasefire monitoring mechanism,” according to a US-Saudi statement.
As part of the seven-day humanitarian ceasefire, Sudanese officials have agreed to restore essential services.
Fighting between the two sides has plunged the country into chaos since it began last month, with more than a million people thought to have been displaced.
Qatar said on Saturday that its embassy in the capital Khartoum had been ransacked by “irregular armed forces”, and it called for the perpetrators to be held accountable for the “heinous act”.
Other embassies, including Jordan’s, have also been previously ransacked, along with aid warehouses of the UN.
Stocks of food, money and essentials have fast declined and aid groups repeatedly complained of being unable to provide sufficient assistance in Khartoum, where much of the violence has taken place.
Both the regular army and the RSF have been urged to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid, restore essential services and withdraw forces from hospitals.
The United States and Saudi Arabia, who sponsored the peace talks in Jeddah, said the ceasefire would come into effect on Monday evening.
In a statement , the US State Department acknowledged previous failed attempts at brokering peace in Sudan, but said there was a key difference this time.
“Unlike previous ceasefires, the agreement reached in Jeddah was signed by the parties and will be supported by a US-Saudi and international-supported ceasefire monitoring mechanism,” it said, without giving more detail.
Taking to Twitter, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken added: “It is past time to silence the guns and allow unhindered humanitarian access.
“I implore both sides to uphold this agreement – the eyes of the world are watching.”
The war broke out in Khartoum on 15 April following days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat.
There was also a power struggle between Sudan’s regular army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the RSF.
Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting and the UN has warned of a worsening situation in Africa’s third-largest country, where a huge number of people already relied on aid before the conflict.
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Airstrikes ‘shook’ homes as sixth week of Sudanese civil war began
Last night, airstrikes hit Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as the civil conflict, which has trapped and displaced millions of people, enters its sixth week.
Law and order have collapsed as a result of fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and both sides have been accused of looting.
In the country of North Africa, supplies of food, money, and necessities are rapidly running out.
Eyewitnesses in southern Omdurman and northern Bahri, the two cities that are located across the Nile from Khartoum and make up Sudan’s “triple capital,” have reported airstrikes on Saturday.
Over a million people have been displaced since fighting between the army and paramilitary groups broke out in April (Picture: EPA) Some of the strikes took place near the state broadcaster in Omdurman, the eyewitnesses said.
Eyewitnesses in Khartoum said that the situation was relatively calm, although sporadic gunshots could be heard.
The conflict, which began on April 15, has displaced almost 1.1 million people internally and into neighbouring countries.
Some 705 people have been killed and at least 5,287 injured, according to the World Health Organization.
Talks sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia in Jeddah have not been fruitful, and the two sides have accused each other of violating multiple ceasefire agreements.
‘We faced heavy artillery fire early this morning, the whole house was shaking,’ said Sanaa Hassan, a 33-year-old living in the al-Salha neighbourhood of Omdurman.
‘It was terrifying, everyone was lying under their beds. What’s happening is a nightmare,’ she said.
The RSF is embedded in residential districts, drawing almost continual air strikes by the regular armed forces.
In recent days ground fighting has flared once again in the Darfur region, in the cities of Nyala and Zalenjei.
Both sides blamed each other in statements late on Friday for sparking the fighting in Nyala, one of the country’s largest cities, which had for weeks been relatively calm due to a locally-brokered truce.
A local activist told reporters there were sporadic gun clashes near the city’s main market close to army headquarters on Saturday morning. Almost 30 people have died in the two previous days of fighting, according to activists.
The war broke out in Khartoum after disputes over plans for the RSF to be integrated into the army and over the future chain of command under an internationally backed deal to shift Sudan towards democracy following decades of conflict-ridden autocracy.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced late on Friday more than $100 million to Sudan and countries receiving fleeing Sudanese, including much-needed food and medical aid.
‘It’s hard to convey the extent of the suffering occurring right now in Sudan,’ said agency head Samantha Power.
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Sudan bombarded with air strikes as paramilitaries raid hospitals
Air strikes pummeled areas of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as violence began near a military installation in the city’s south.
The army has used air power and heavy artillery to try to drive back the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from residential areas of Khartoum and its adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman.
The Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate accused the RSF of attacking three ambulances and arresting their drivers and a doctor in Khartoum.
The union said it had documented attacks on 20 hospitals.
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Sudan conflict: Grandmother dies fighting in Khartoum
The horrific conflict between Sudan’s two warring generals confined her inside her home in Khartoum, where she passed away all by herself but no one knows how many days the old woman had been deceased.
Azhaar had been watching from New York, desperately trying to save her. Now, she is desperately trying to recover her body.
She’s not alone. Intense fighting has made it dangerous to gather the dead in parts of Sudan’s capital.
The humanitarian agreement reached by the two sides in Jeddah on Friday specifically commits to helping aid workers collect, register and bury those killed in the fighting.
“We keep on seeing dead bodies on the street, and hospitals that are out of service,” says Patrick Youssef, the Africa Regional Director for the International Committee of the Red Cross. “I hope the new declaration of humanitarian principles can truly allow for humanitarian corridors.”
So far it hasn’t, because the parties have yet to secure a truce to turn their promises on paper into reality.
Azhaar’s grandparents, Abdalla Sholgami and Alaweya Reshwan, got stuck in the heat of the fighting. They lived in Baladiya street in Khartoum, next to the military headquarters and the British embassy. It became a battlefield for the two warring parties – Sudan’s army, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Image caption,Azhaar’s 85-year-old grandfather Abdalla Sholgami was a British citizen. He was shot three times in Khartoum Mr Sholgami, a British citizen, was shot three times, leaving his disabled wife alone at home. He somehow survived, and his family are now trying to evacuate him from Sudan.
But there was no word about his wife and Azhaar’s grandmother, Alaweya. Weeks of Azhaar’s frantic phone calls to the British embassy failed to get help.
Her grandparents couldn’t make their way to the airfield for the evacuation of British citizens, so they were left stuck in Khartoum.
Three days ago she got a call from the Turkish embassy, also located next to the house, saying her grandmother was dead.
Azhaar didn’t want to believe it.
“I called back again and said, ‘Maybe she’s in a coma, did you check her pulse? Did you check her body, see if her heart is beating?’ And then he tells me that her body’s been decaying,” she says.
“It’s quite painful to think that she was alone, with no electricity in the midst of the heat – it’s really hot in Sudan right now – waking up to bomb sounds.”
Another woman we spoke to had an uncle, Ahmad, who lived in a nearby neighbourhood. She didn’t want us to reveal her name because she fears she might be targeted, but told us this story.
Ahmad’s family was gathering at the home of a relative so they could evacuate together. He realised he’d forgotten his paperwork, so he returned to his home in the Riyadh neighbourhood and never came back.
Image caption,Khartoum remains gripped by violence Six days later his brother got a call from someone trying to identify a body lying in front of Ahmad’s house.
The person said Ahmad had found RSF fighters in his home. The situation escalated, they killed him, looted the place, and left.
Neighbours wrapped Ahmad in plastic bags until aid workers were able to arrive. They wanted to bury him right there because there’s no garden, but the family refused to have him laid to rest virtually in the street. So his body still lies there, encased in the plastic.
Azhaar is still trying to arrange for someone to pick up her grandmother’s remains. An organisation that tried on the day the Jeddah Declaration was announced had to turn back because they got caught in a gunfight.
“I was very close to my grandmother,” she says. “And in our last conversation before I left for New York she said, I’m scared you’re going to leave me alone.”
“I laughed at her. I said, I’ll never leave you alone, no matter what, I’ll always be there… I feel I let her down.”
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Strong explosions in Khartoum as fighting enters 26th day
On the 26th day of the conflict between military and paramilitaries in Sudan, powerful explosions rumble across Khartoum early on Wednesday. The two camps’ negotiators have not yet agreed upon a humanitarian corridor.
“We were awakened by explosions and heavy artillery fire,” a resident of Omdurman, a city on the outskirts of Khartoum, told AFP.
Overnight, other witnesses in different neighbourhoods of Khartoum reported two huge explosions heard across the capital, which has a population of five million. Residents of El-Obeid, 350 km west of the capital, also reported fighting and explosions in their town.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane ‘s army and General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo ‘s dreaded paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) sent negotiators to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for only ” technical” ” pre-discussions ” on corridors secured for humanitarian aid.
But so far no announcement has been made in Jeddah, on the Red Sea, where the talks are taking place.
The head of the UN for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, who arrived in Jeddah on Sunday, has already left. He proposed to the two parties to commit to “guarantee the passage of humanitarian aid” via a declaration of principle, according to the UN.
Since its beginning on April 15, the conflict has left more than 750 dead and 5,000 injured.
Nearly 150,000 refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the UN, while the number of internally displaced people in Sudan now exceeds 700,000, more than double the 340,000 counted a week ago.
Those who remain in Khartoum live barricaded in their homes. Without water or power, with almost dry food stocks and less and less cash, they survive in the scorching heat thanks to networks of solidarity between neighbours and relatives.
Before going to war, Generals Burhane and Daglo had together ousted civilians from power with their 2021 putsch. Two years earlier, the army had agreed under street pressure to dismiss dictator Omar al-Bashir, who had been in power for 30 years.
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Sudan: Crossfire in Khartoum burn zoo animals
Many creatures in Sudan’s capital zoo, including an elderly crocodile, parrots, and enormous reptiles, are thought to have perished as a result of the area becoming inaccessible due to street fighting between opposing groups in the nation.
At least 100 animals, all kept in enclosures, will have gone more than three weeks without water or food, said Sara Abdalla, chief zoologist at the Sudan Museum of Natural History.
Millions of people in Sudan have suffered from shortages of food, water and medicine after the conflict disrupted the most basic services. But as the sound of explosions echoes through the capital Khartoum, Sara Abdalla is consumed with worry about the animals she cares for, especially those that are increasingly rare in their natural habitat in Sudan.
“I feel a lot of misery and sadness, as well as helplessness,” she said in a telephone interview from Khartoum. “I guess we lost the birds and the mammals .”
The zoo is home to species such as an African gray parrot, vervet monkey, giant lizards called Nile monitor lizards, desert tortoise, horned viper, and Nubian spitting cobra. Before the fighting, all these animals were fed twice a day. But the last time they received their meals and, for some, their medicine, was on April 14, the day before the fighting broke out, according to Mr Abdalla.
The conflict, which has ended months of tensions between rival Sudanese generals, pits the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhane, head of the ruling Sovereign Council, against powerful rapid support paramilitary forces. The Rapid Support Forces (FSR) are commanded by Burhane’s deputy in the council, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo . Sara Abdalla argues that neither had heeded calls to allow access to the zoo.
The conflict turned much of Khartoum and the adjacent city of Omdurman into a battlefield, with both sides using heavy weaponry, including artillery and airstrikes, inside urban areas. Urban fighting has severely damaged infrastructure and property and puts civilians at great risk as they attempt to move through city streets.
Residents fleeing the capital said they saw bodies littering sidewalks and central plazas, especially in areas not far from the museum. According to the Sudanese doctors’ Union, around 500 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, but the actual death toll is believed to be higher.
The zoo, which is located within the grounds of the University of Khartoum, is one of the oldest in Sudan. It was established about a century ago as part of Gordon Memorial College, an educational institution built in the early 1900s when Sudan was part of the British Empire. It was annexed to the University of Khartoum two years after Sudan’s independence in 1956.
Its current location is close to the army headquarters, where fighting was intense, preventing access to the museum.
Sara Abdalla, who teaches zoology at the University of Khartoum, started working at the museum in 2006 and was appointed director of the establishment in 2020. She had dreamed of this position since she had visited the museum as a child. Now locked in her home in south Khartoum with her husband and their two children – Yara, 9, and Mohamed, 4 – she worries about the animals who have already survived years of turmoil, economic collapse and shutdown due to pandemic.
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Basic commodity prices skyrocket by 60% in Sudan
As war intensifies in Sudan, the price of goods and services has skyrocketed.
According to the United Nations humanitarian agency, the price of basic commodities such as fuel, food staples, and water has gone up by 60 percent or more due to supply challenges resulting from the clashes in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan.
This is a new setback to Sudan’s stagnant economy. Shortages of main goods such as flour and vegetables have been reported in the capital along with unprecedented price hikes.
Khartoum is the business hub for most industries and services. Factories are located in parts of the city where intense fighting is happening. Some of them have been looted.
Sudan is an important exporter of gum Arabic, gold, sesame, peanuts, and livestock. But the economy has been held back by decades of sanctions and international isolation, as well as mismanagement and corruption.
People have been struggling with years of spiking inflation and sharp currency devaluations. The situation worsened after the 2021 military coup when international financial institutions halted Sudan’s aid programs.
The ongoing conflict has closed out trade flows to and from Sudan and the main ports have halted operations until further notice.
The country’s overwhelmed economy is expected to deteriorate further if the fighting continues.
Despite several ceasefires declared by Sudan’s conflicting parties, tensions and some deadly fighting continue to rage in the capital Khartoum and other areas.
Sudan’s health ministry stopped updating the number of casualties on May 2, when the death toll stood at 550 with 4,926 people injured.
In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are fleeing to neighboring countries. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a total of 123,110 refugees have fled to South Sudan, Egypt, Chad, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic since the conflict erupted in mid-April.
The UN agency projected the number could rise to 860,000 in the next six months.
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Sudan: Over 700,000 citizens displaced
The number of people displaced within Sudan by violence between opposing military factions has more than doubled in the last week to over 700,000 people, according to a UN organization.
Despite ceasefire talks being held in Saudi Arabia, the increase in displacements has generated concerns about an escalation of bloodshed.
Air raids and ground clashes continue in Khartoum, the capital.
Entire neighborhoods have been deserted as residents evacuate their houses.
Khartoum has a population of 5.4 million people, but the once-peaceful city has been ravaged by the fighting that began on 15 April.
One resident told the BBC that she heard gunfire again on Tuesday from many directions, and the distant sound of air strikes.
Others said the military’s fighter jets were flying all over south Khartoum and heavy battles were raging in the middle-class neighbourhood al-Sahafa, not too far from the international airport, which is shut.
The fighting is between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led respectively by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti.
More than 600 people have now been killed and 5,000 wounded in the conflict.
Heavy fighting has also been reported in two cities adjacent to Khartoum – Bahri and Omdurman – and the western region of Darfur.
“Many IDPs [internally displaced people] are sheltering with relatives, while others are gathering in schools, mosques and public buildings,” said Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Mr Dillon said people were running out of cash, and basic supplies like fuel.
“The ATMs aren’t working and the banking system is not functioning. Fuel is difficult to come by and expensive,” he added.
Last week, the UN said that about 100,000 people had fled to neighbouring states, and the number could reach more than 800,000 if fighting does not stop.
Representatives of the the army and RSF have been holding their first face-to-face talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah in a bid to negotiate a ceasefire.
Speaking to Egypt-based Al-Qahera News on Monday, Gen Burhan said that a “permanent ceasefire” needed to come into effect in Khartoum before a political settlement could be negotiated with the RSF.
“We can discuss a settlement after we reach a permanent ceasefire in Khartoum,” he said.
RSF are in control of much of the capital, with the military’s air strikes aimed at weakening its positions and to prevent it from getting reinforcements.
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Sudanese stage actress killed in Khartoum
On Wednesday, amidst fighting between two rival factions that have ravaged Sudan and claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, Sudanese actress Asia Abdel-Majid was slain in the crossfire.
The 80-year-old was killed after shells hit her home in Bahri, north of the capital, in fighting between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese army, her nephew told CNN.
It is unclear if it was the RSF or the army that fired the shot that killed Abdel-Majid.
Failed negotiations between Sudanese army head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan RSF and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo over a disputed power-sharing arrangement exploded into violence in mid-April, sparking a mass exodus of refugees from the country and resulting in the deaths of at least 528 people.
Previous ceasefires and promises of peace talks between both leaders have failed to curb the ongoing conflict with eyewitness accounts of fighting in Khartoum reported on Thursday, despite a seven-day truce announced just days earlier.
Sudanese actress Asia Abdel-Majid.From Nur Ihlas/Facebook
Abdel-Majid was buried in the grounds of a kindergarten where she worked, her nephew said, adding that it was unsafe to take her to a cemetery.
The kindergarten is next door to Abdel-Majid’s home, where she was alone when the shelling took place.
She was considered a pioneer of theater in Sudan and the country’s first professional stage actress, establishing a kindergarten in Bahri and becoming a teacher when she retired.
‘Torn apart’
Smoke rises over Khartoum during clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese army on April 17, 2023. Eyewitnesses say the violence in the capital has intensified, despite repeated ceasefires.Reuters
Witnesses said the Sudanese army and the RSF are fighting using light and heavy weapons in the vicinity of the Presidential Palace – the most violent since the start of the clashes – as the conflict nears its fourth week.
At least 190 children have been killed and another 1,700 injured in the country since the violence broke out last month, according to reports received by UNICEF, the UN body’s Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement on Thursday. Due to the intensity of the violence, UNICEF was unable to confirm the estimates, she added.
Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned on Wednesday that people trapped in battlefields are running out of water and food.
“Families across Sudan, including those of our colleagues, are being torn apart, and having to choose between remaining trapped in the battlefield, or risking their lives to flee or reach an overcrowded hospital,” Egeland said in a statement.
“They are running out of everything, including water, food, electricity, fuel, and cash. We need the international community to put as much effort into secure humanitarian access, regardless of ceasefire and in providing aid to millions of people as they have in evacuating their own citizens,” he added.
The violence has triggered a mass exodus of refugees from Sudan, with the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) on Thursday warning that $445 million is needed to help the 860,000 refugees and returnees who could escape the country by October.
According to a UNHCR statement, the plan was designed by “134 partners, including UN agencies, national and international NGOS and civil society groups” and includes a contingency strategy for new arrivals (refugees, returning refugees and others) to neighbouring countries.”
American trapped in Sudan is desperate to escape amid deadly military clashes
At the same time, hundreds of evacuees arrived from Sudan in Nigeria on Wednesday after being held up for days at the Egyptian border for days, as reports over the chaotic border response to the uptick in evacuees continue.
The first contingent of 376 Nigerians were flown home in a military aircraft and a local carrier and arrived in the capital Abuja shortly before midnight, according to the Nigerians In Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM).
Last week, more than 7,000 Nigerian nationals, mostly students fleeing the Sudan conflict had been left stranded at the Egyptian border due to the unavailability of visas, NIDCOM said while appealing to Egyptian authorities “to kindly allow the already traumatized travellers to transit to their final destinations.”
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Thousands more escape from Sudan despite ceasefire
More people attempt to flee the country as the fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces enters its third week. Even after the parties decided to extend the cease-fire for a another three days, explosions and heavy weapons have been heard in the capital Khartoum.
Since the beginning of this violent part on the conflict more than 400 civilians have been killed. This is the information from the Sudanese Doctors Union.
In Khartoum, the five million inhabitants are deprived of running water and electricity, as well as, in many cases, internet and telephone services. Gasoline and cash are also becoming scarce.
Those who have the possibilities leave. According to the latest UN data over 50000 refugeese came to the neighbouring countries. Sudan’s partners organize the evacuation of foreigners, more of them are arriving to more secure places. But some might still blocked in the coutry.
Several tens of thousands of people have already crossed the borders, notably from Chad in the west and Egypt in the north. In total, 270,000 people could flee to Chad and South Sudan, according to the UN.
Several Western countries, including the United States, France, Canada and the United Kingdom, have continued to evacuate hundreds of people. China has announced that it has evacuated most of its nationals.
Dampening hopes for a democratic transition, the two generals together ousted civilians from power in a coup in 2021. Since then, they have not been able to agree on the integration of paramilitaries into the army before finally going to war on April 15.
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Sudan: Fighting and airstrikes ongoing in Khartoum as ceasefire fails
The latest truce was due to end late on Sunday April 30, 2023 but the army declared that it is attacking the city from all sides with airstrikes and powerful artillery in order to wipe out its paramilitary competitors
Millions remain trapped in the capital, where food is running short.
Foreign countries have been evacuating their nationals amid the chaos.
More than 500 people have been reported killed since fighting erupted on April 15 between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). But the number of dead and injured may be much higher.
Army commander Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, are vying for power – and disagree in particular about plans to include the RSF into the army.
Thursday night’s agreement to extend an uneasy ceasefire followed intensive diplomatic efforts by neighbouring countries, the US, UK and UN. But the 72-hour extension has not held.
By Saturday evening, heavy fighting had resumed in Khartoum. The army said it had conducted operations against RSF troops north of the city centre.
Eyewitnesses told Reuters news agency that army drones had targeted RSF position near a major oil refinery.
“We woke up once again to the sound of fighter jets and anti-aircraft weapons blasting all over our neighbourhood,” one resident told AFP news agency on Sunday.
Image caption,Tens of thousands of people are attempting to flee Sudan BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, who is monitoring events from Nairobi in Kenya, says the army will find it difficult to expel the RSF from Khartoum.
For all the army’s superior firepower, the RSF are highly mobile and more suited to urban warfare, our correspondent adds.
On Saturday the UK government has ended its evacuation operation. The Foreign Office said the last flight left Khartoum at 22:00 local time (20:00 GMT), and in total nearly 1,900 people were flown out.
A US-organised convoy has reached Port Sudan to evacuate more US citizens by ship to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. It said hundreds of Americans had already left, in addition to the diplomats evacuated by air a week ago.
Also on Saturday Sudanese former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok warned that the conflict could become worse than those in Syria and Libya. Those wars have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and caused instability in the wider regions.
Speaking in Nairobi, he said: “I think it will be a nightmare for the world. This is not a war between an army and small rebellion. It is almost like two armies.”
Meanwhile, there are chaotic scenes in Port Sudan where people are desperate to board ships, some of which are heading to Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Image caption,Some 1,888 British nationals have been rescued from Sudan, the government said -
1,650 Britons now moved from Sudan
More than 1,000 people have been flown on to the UK out of the more than 1,650 people who have now been evacuated from Khartoum.
The operation here in Cyprus will continue until tomorrow afternoon.
Sources at Larnaca Airport have told me that several RAF flights are due in here from Khartoum this afternoon and into the early hours of tomorrow morning.
The evacuees will then be put on flights back to the UK.
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Attacks have resumed despite ceasefire – RSF claims
Despite a ceasefire, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has made claims that their enemy, the regular Sudanese military, has repeatedly airstriked their bases throughout Khartoum.
The RSF said these targeted residential areas of the capital.
In a statement issued last night, seen by BBC Monitoring, the group claimed it controlled the majority of Khartoum. We’ve not been able to verify this.
Some of the latest clashes between the army and RSF have been happening around the army headquarters and the Republican Palace in Khartoum – and some parts of the Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman.
However, other parts of Khartoum and Khartoum Bahri, to the north, remain largely calm.
The rival factions officially agreed to extend a ceasefire for another 72 hours on Thursday night.
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Sudan: Many Nigerians left in Khartoum
The capital city of Sudan draws university students from all around Africa, Asia, and beyond. Nigeria has one of the largest student populations.
But many Nigerians say they’re still waiting to be rescued from Khartoum, despite seeing their friends from other nations being safely removed.
“There is no presence of the embassy of Nigeria at the International University of Africa. There is no communication. There are only Nigerian students [left there] right now,” Abubakar Sadiq Ibrahim told the Reuters news agency.
Other Nigerian students have made similar complaints to the BBC. Nigeria has asked for a safe corridor to evacuate 5,500 citizens, most of them students, Reuters reports.
The fighting broke out when Ibrahim was just two weeks away from completing his degree.
“It’s a very sad and unpleasant experience,” he said. He cited inflation, food shortages, and walks of 3km [1.8 miles] to buy supplies. “All the shops are closed. There is no movement, there is nothing.”
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It is ‘hide and seek’ in Sudan – father tells children
As their home in Sudan got caught up in a gunfire, a father pretended to his kids that they were playing “hide and seek” as they dove for shelter.
In the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, Munzir Salman’s family was at home when two military factions who are currently engaged in combat began firing at each other from opposite sides of their home.
I was in the center, the 37-year-old claimed. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time I’ve heard gunfire around me, and it was horrifying.
I had to maintain my composure for my three children because I am a single parent. I had to explain to them that it was a game, so I described it as a game of hide-and-seek.
‘It was an experience they had never been through before, it was very scary but I tried to make it a game for them.
‘I explained the danger before trying to make it like Tom and Jerry where the people outside were Tom and we were Jerry.’
Munzir, a British-Sudanese builder with dual citizenship, told his story while waiting to fly to the UK via Cyprus.
British-Sudanese dad shows gunshot damage to his home caught in the fighting
British nationals have faced dangerous journeys to the Wadi Saeedna airstrip in the hopes of being able to board an evacuation flight out of the country.
Eight flights were expected to have left by the end of Wednesday to lift people to safety as the military races against time to rescue citizens while a fragile ceasefire holds.
British nationals have faced dangerous journeys to the Wadi Saeedna airstrip in the hopes of being able to board an evacuation flight out of the country.
Eight flights were expected to have left by the end of Wednesday to lift people to safety as the military races against time to rescue citizens while a fragile ceasefire holds.
Foreign secretary James Cleverly told UK nationals on Tuesday that they must make their own way to the airstrip.
Munzir, whose wife died in 2020, had to take the trip with three children, 11-year-old Siddig, eight-year-old Shaden and six-year-old Yasmin.
It was only 20 miles from the family’s house to the airstrip but the violence around them meant they travelled 60 miles to get there.
The dad added: ‘It was hard to explain to the children that it’s a dangerous journey.
‘The first part was that the RSF were trying to spot us as we travelled through neighbourhoods. They spotted us four times but because they saw I had children they let us go.’
The first British evacuees from Sudan touched down on home soil at Stansted Airport at around 2.24pm this afternoon after taking off from Cyprus this morning. Around 100 people were counted off the plane.
According to the government’s own estimates, there are at least 2,000 UK nationals in Sudan, though there have been suggestions the number could be above 4,000.
What you need to know about the war in Sudan
How did the war start?
The current fighting is the result of a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The paramilitary group, which was originally created by dictator Omar al-Bashir to crush a rebellion in the western region of Darfur, cooperated with the army to overthrow the autocrat in 2019.
This was supposed to precede Sudan’s transition to a democratic government, a move backed by western nations.
The north African country saw more than two years of power-sharing between the military and civilian leaders but a coup brought this to an end in October 2021.
Sudan was left with the army’s general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as Sudan’s de facto ruler and the RSF’s general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, as vice-president.
What sparked the recent escalation?
The Sudanese people and the international community continued to push for a new transition to democracy after the coup.
The plan was to get Sudan to a point where civilian parties would have control over the military, which the RSF would be dissolved into.
But there has long been tension surrounding the details of this arrangement, namely the proposed timeline – the army wanted the integration complete in two years but the RSF insisted on waiting 10.
Nevertheless, negotiations looked hopeful with a final deal due to be signed earlier this month, before a new phase of fighting broke out on April 15.
The army pointed the finger at the RSF for mobilising troops to key strategic sites in the capital of Khartoum and the RSF claimed it was just responding to the army’s alleged plot to seize full power with Bashir loyalists.
What now?
More than 420 people have been killed and more than 3,700 wounded since the conflict escalated, according to Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health.
Paramedics, frontline nurses and doctors have told the Wold Health Organisation they are often unable to reach the wounded because of attacks on ambulances and health facilities.
Some 20 hospitals are no longer functional and 12 others are at risk due to lack of medical supplies and health care workers.
Multiple countries, including the UK, are working on evacuation plans for its citizens with the Government promising to prioritise the vulnerable ‘starting with family groups with children, the elderly or people with documented medical conditions’.
World leaders have urged the two warring generals to de-escalate the violence and return to negotiations.
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Sudan: Fighting happening in Omdurman despite ceasefire
Despite a 72-hour ceasefire mainly holding, fighting is still occurring in some areas of Sudan.
Fighting broke out near TV and radio buildings in Omdurman, a city next to the capital Khartoum, according to Mohamed Osman of the BBC.
People are having trouble getting access to food and money, our correspondent continues, and there is no fuel and a shortage of doctors.
The ceasefire, which was set to end on Friday, has apparently been extended for another 72 hours by the army head of Sudan.
According to the Reuters news agency, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan gave the plan from the regional African body Intergovernmental Authority on Development initial clearance.
The proposal suggests sending envoys from the Sudanese army and rival group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to Juba in South Sudan to discuss the details.
The current ceasefire began at midnight local time (22:00 GMT) on Monday bringing a pause to a conflict which erupted on 15 April amid a power struggle between the leaders of the army and the RSF.
People in Khartoum and Omdurman are finding it difficult to find clean water and food and access to cash, our correspondent says.
Explosions and gunfire could still be heard on Wednesday, with warplanes in the air, although it was quieter than before the ceasefire and the situation was good enough for evacuations to continue.
Our correspondent says he and his family find it difficult to sleep because of the explosions and shooting.
Gangs have also been looting homes and empty buildings, targeting cars and vehicles, he adds. Local people fear what will happen after the ceasefire ends.
Both sides still man checkpoints but these are fewer in number as some troops have withdrawn to other areas.
The warring factions both claim to control important places like airports and army headquarters. There is no internet access and phone lines are poor.
At least 459 people have been killed since the fighting broke out though the actual number is thought to be much higher.
Earlier the World Health Organization said it expected “many more” deaths due to disease, a lack of access to food and water and disruption to health facilities.
Several countries have evacuated their nationals since the ceasefire took hold.
A boat evacuating more than 1,600 people from dozens of countries arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and both Germany and France say all their citizens have now left the country.
The first flight bringing British national home landed at Stansted on Wednesday, via Larnaca in Cyprus.
Some 536 British nationals have been evacuated from Sudan on six flights, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.
The chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission confirmed to the BBC that evacuations of stranded Nigerian students in Sudan had started.
It is thought there could be up to 5,000 Nigerians living in Sudan, and that 3,500 of them are students.
However, a UK-born student in Sudan said she did not have enough petrol to get to rescue flights.
Samar Eltayeb, 20, from Birmingham, has been sheltering with a relative outside Khartoum since fighting began.
The third-year medical student at Sudan’s National University has been waiting to be evacuated to join her parents and siblings in the UK.
“We have have no gas, and the petrol stations are empty,” Ms Eltayeb said. “There’ll be constant flights within the next few days, but if I can’t find gas to get there, then I’m stuck.”
Buses carrying evacuees are continuing to leave Khartoum despite soaring prices of fuel and bus tickets.
Meanwhile, former Sudanese politician Ahmed Haroun said that he and other former officials are no longer in jail.
Reports emerged this week of a prison break at Kober in Khartoum- where Ahmed Haroun was serving a sentence alongside Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president.
The Sudanese army said Bashir was moved from the prison to a military hospital before the fighting erupted.
Both Bashir and Haroun are facing charges by the International Criminal Court for their alleged role in the atrocities in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
On Tuesday, Haroun confirmed in a statement aired on Sudan’s Tayba TV that he and other Bashir loyalists who served under him had left the jail – but said he would be ready to appear before the judiciary whenever it was functioning.
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Govt evacuates 82 Ghanaians from Khartoum in Sudan
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has revealed that a total of 82 Ghanaians have been evacuated from Khartoum in Sudan to safety.
In a press statement dated April 25, the ministry indicated that it successfully evacuated two batches of 50 and 27 identified Ghanaian nationals to safety in Gedaref, Sudan. They comprise 34 females and 43 males.
According to the ministry, “they will be transported tomorrow to the Ethiopian border town of Metema where they will be received by Ghana Embassy officials, processed for Ethiopian entry visas and thereof repatriated home.”
Also, three Ghanaian footballers and two others working for an Australian Mining Company are being evacuated through the Egyptian border post of Wadi Halfa, north of Sudan. This brings the total to 82.
To ensure all Ghanaians are brought to safety, those stranded have been advised to reach out to the Honorary Consul, Mr Osama Ataaelmanan via +249-92920-0000.
Accordingly, the public will be apprised of new developments in due course, the ministry pledged.
Earlier this week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration announced its preparedness to evacuate Ghanaian nationals trapped in Sudan’s conflict.
The Ghana Embassy in Cairo, Egypt which has concurrent accreditation to Sudan, working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and the Honorary Consulate is working to ensure this.
Thousands of people have been displaced in Sudan as a result of a deadly war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Khartoum has been the epicentre of the violence, with civilians suffering the most. Over 300 deaths have been reported.
Countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, Kenya and the UK are all working to evacuate their nationals and diplomats.
The first group of Kenyans who fled Sudan arrived at the Nairobi airport on Monday night in an aircraft.
Defense Secretary Aden Duale welcomed the several evacuees after they departed from a Kenya Air Force aircraft.
The Egyptian military evacuated 177 soldiers last week, while the foreign ministry reported on Sunday that 436 citizens had traveled abroad by land. It is estimated that there are around 10,000 Egyptians living in Sudan.
Over 200 Moroccans were taken to Port Sudan in convoys organised by their embassy.
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Gunfire is heard as an uneasy truce is maintained in the Sudan crisis
Despite reports of fresh gunfire and shelling, the Sudanese ceasefire appears to be holding.
The fighting started on April 15 and this is the fourth attempt to put an end to it.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the 72-hour truce had been agreed between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after 48 hours of negotiations.
The latest ceasefire attempt started at midnight (22:00 GMT on Monday).
There have also been reports of warplanes flying over Khartoum, but civilians are back on the streets of the capital.
At least 459 people have died in the conflict so far, though the actual number is thought to be much higher.
Both sides have confirmed they will cease hostilities.
But Tagreed Abdin, who lives 7km from the centre of Khartoum, said she could hear shelling from her home on Tuesday morning despite the agreement.
“The situation right now is that this morning there was shelling and gunfire,” she told the BBC.
“Obviously the ceasefire hasn’t taken,” she added.
In other developments, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned there is a “high risk of biological hazard” after fighters seized a laboratory believed to be holding samples of diseases including polio and measles.
Since the violence began, residents of Khartoum have been told to stay inside, and food and water supplies have been running low.
The bombing has hit key infrastructure, like water pipes, meaning that some people have been forced to drink from the River Nile.
Countries have scrambled to evacuate their diplomats and civilians as fighting raged in central, densely populated parts of the capital.
There will be hopes the ceasefire will allow civilians to leave the city. Foreign governments will also hope it will allow for continued evacuations out of the country.
Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Monday that an attaché had been killed while driving to the embassy in Khartoum to help with the evacuation of Egyptian citizens.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also confirmed on Monday that more than 1,000 EU citizens had been evacuated.
South Africa, Kenya and Uganda are among the African nations to have announced the evacuation of their citizens.
The UK government has announced it will begin evacuating British passport holders and immediate family members from Tuesday.
On Monday, Mr Blinken said that some convoys trying to move people out had encountered “robbery and looting”.
The US, he added, was looking at potentially resuming its diplomatic presence in Sudan but he described the conditions there as “very challenging”.
Sudan suffered an “internet blackout” on Sunday amid the fighting but connectivity has since been partially restored, according to monitoring group NetBlocks.
The UN is bracing for up to 270,000 people to flee Sudan into neighbouring South Sudan and Chad.
Hassan Ibrahim, 91, is among those to have already fled the country. The retired physician lives near the main airport in Khartoum, where some of the worst fighting has taken place, but has since made the perilous journey into neighbouring Egypt with his family.
He told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme they had escaped being caught up in a firefight between RSF fighters and the army but that a van travelling behind them had got hit. The family then boarded a bus to the border, which took 12 hours, only for them to be met by “crowded and chaotic” scenes as people waited to be given entry.
“There were so many families with elderly passengers, children and babies,” said Mr Ibrahim. “The Sudanese are fleeing the country – it is a sad reality.”
Eiman ab Garga, a British-Sudanese gynaecologist who works in the UK, was visiting the capital with her children when the fighting began and has just been evacuated to Djibouti on a flight organised by France. Her hurried departure meant that she was not able to say goodbye to her ailing father, her mother or her sister.
“The country is dirty, there’s rubbish all over it,” she told BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight programme. “There’s sewage overflowing, it smells, so now we’re next going to have an outbreak of illness and disease, and there won’t be a hospital to go to there.”
“We’re just looking at death and destruction and destitution.”
Violence broke out primarily in Khartoum, between rival military factions battling for control of Africa’s third largest country.
This came after days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat.
Sudan: The basics
- Sudan is in north-east Africa and has a history of instability: The military toppled long-time leader Omar al-Bashir in 2019 after mass protests
- It then overthrew a power-sharing government in 2021, putting two men at the helm: The head of the army and his deputy, who is also the head of a paramilitary group called the RSF
- They disagree on how to restore civilian rule to Sudan: The RSF leader claims to represent marginalised groups against the country’s elites but his forces were accused of ethnic cleansing
What is going on in Sudan? A simple guide
Since a 2021 coup, Sudan has been run by a council of generals, led by the two military men at the centre of this dispute – Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country’s president, and his deputy and leader of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti.
They have disagreed on the direction the country is going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule.
The main sticking points are plans to include the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new force.
Gen Dagalo has accused Gen Burhan’s government of being “radical Islamists” and that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress for which they have so long yearned”.
Many find this message hard to believe, given the brutal track record of the RSF.
Gen Burhan has said he supports the idea of returning to civilian rule, but that he will only hand over power to an elected government.
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Sudan reportedly sees ceasefire between army, RSF
A truce in Sudan went into effect at midnight local time (22:00 GMT on Monday), and it seems to be holding.
With prior cease-fires not being respected, this is the fourth attempt to put an end to the violence that started on April 15.
After 48 hours of discussions, the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) came to a 72-hour truce, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
On Tuesday, there were reports of gunshots in the capital, Khartoum.
There have also reportedly been reports of airplanes hovering overhead, but city dwellers have returned to the streets.
Independently, both parties to the conflict, which has claimed more than 400 lives, declared their participation in the truce.
The violence in Sudan, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres, runs the risk of igniting a “catastrophic conflagration” that might spread over the entire region and beyond.
Residents in Khartoum have been ordered to stay inside since the violence started, and food and water supplies are running low.
Some individuals have been compelled to drink water from the River Nile since the bombing damaged important infrastructure, such as water pipes.
As battle raged in the core, heavily populated areas of the capital, nations scurried to evacuate their embassies and citizens.
There will be hopes the ceasefire will allow civilians to leave the city. Foreign governments will also hope it will allow for continued evacuations out of the country.
Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Monday that an attaché had been killed while driving to the embassy in Khartoum to help with the evacuation of Egyptian citizens.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also confirmed on Monday that more than 1,000 EU citizens had been evacuated.
South Africa, Kenya and Uganda are among the African nations to have announced the evacuation of their citizens.
The UK government has announced it will begin evacuating British passport holders and immediate family members from Tuesday.
On Monday, Mr Blinken said that some convoys trying to move people out had encountered “robbery and looting”.
The US, he added, was looking at potentially resuming its diplomatic presence in Sudan but he described the conditions there as “very challenging”.
Sudan suffered an “internet blackout” on Sunday amid the fighting but connectivity has since been partially restored, according to monitoring group NetBlocks.
It is estimated that tens of thousands of people, including Sudanese citizens and those from neighbouring countries, have fled because of the unrest.
Hassan Ibrahim, 91, was among them. The retired physician lives near the main airport in Khartoum, where some of the worst fighting has taken place, but has since made the perilous journey into neighbouring Egypt with his family.
He told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme they had escaped being caught up in a firefight between RSF fighters and the army but that a van travelling behind them had got hit. The family then boarded a bus to the border, which took 12 hours, only for them to be met by “crowded and chaotic” scenes as people waited to be given entry.
“There were so many families with elderly passengers, children and babies,” said Mr Ibrahim. “The Sudanese are fleeing the country – it is a sad reality.”
Eiman ab Garga, a British-Sudanese gynaecologist who works in the UK, was visiting the capital with her children when the fighting began and has just been evacuated to Djibouti on a flight organised by France. Her hurried departure meant that she was not able to say goodbye to her ailing father, her mother or her sister.
“The country is dirty, there’s rubbish all over it,” she told BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight programme. “There’s sewage overflowing, it smells, so now we’re next going to have an outbreak of illness and disease, and there won’t be a hospital to go to there.”
“We’re just looking at death and destruction and destitution.”
Violence broke out primarily in Khartoum, between rival military factions battling for control of Africa’s third largest country.
This came after days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat.
Since a 2021 coup, Sudan has been run by a council of generals, led by the two military men at the centre of this dispute – Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country’s president, and his deputy and leader of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti.
They have disagreed on the direction the country is going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule.
The main sticking points are plans to include the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new force.
Gen Dagalo has accused Gen Burhan’s government of being “radical Islamists” and that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress for which they have so long yearned”.
Many find this message hard to believe, given the brutal track record of the RSF.
Gen Burhan has said he supports the idea of returning to civilian rule, but that he will only hand over power to an elected government.
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People flee Sudan’s capital as violence ravages the city
Both Sudanese citizens and Western personnel are desperately attempting to leave Khartoum, the country’s capital, where fierce fighting between opposing factions is overrunning hospitals with victims and numerous attempts to bring about a ceasefire have failed.
Six days of violent clashes and confrontations between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have destabilised the streets of Khartoum and other nearby cities.
By Thursday morning, many residents trapped in the middle of the clashes appeared to have lost faith in an immediate resolution. There was an increase in the number of people at bus stops, trying to leave Khartoum and escape the fighting, according to witnesses.
“Yesterday (Wednesday), I decided to leave Khartoum together with my wife and four of my children at any cost,” Muhammad Hammam told CNN in an interview, as he recalled his success in escaping from the Al-Nasr neighborhood, east of the Nile, to the city of Atbara, northern Sudan.
“Death surrounded us from all directions, so I said it would be better for us to die attempting to cling to life while trying to survive instead of dying by a stray bullet at home or maybe dying of hunger or thirst,” he said.
Up to 20,000 refugees from Sudan’s Darfur region have fled to Chad in recent days, according to a statement from the UN Refugee Agency.
But escaping is no simple task. The capital’s international airport remains out of service, according to a source in a Sudanese army, who claims the airport’s control towers were destroyed by RSF bombings. CNN is reaching out to the RSF for comment.
The ongoing fighting and closed airport have hampered efforts to evacuate US diplomatic staff. A senior US official told CNN Thursday that an evacuation was not imminent as the situation on the ground remained too volatile. Americans in the country have been urged to shelter in place.
The US Defense Department said it was deploying “additional capabilities” nearby Sudan to secure the US embassy in the country and assist with a potential evacuation, if the situation calls for it. It includes hundreds of marines who are already in Djibouti, a US defense official told CNN, with aircraft capable of bringing in ground units to secure an embassy.
US President Joe Biden had “authorized the military to move forward with pre-positioning forces and to develop options in case – and I want to stress right now – in case there’s a need for an evacuation,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
Hammam said the attempt to flee was interrupted by a street war that broke out in his neighborhood by the warring factions. “My wife, children and I remained lying on the ground until yesterday morning,” he said.
Bus tickets out of the conflict zone were around five times more expensive than before violence broke out, he told CNN. “Praise be to God, we escaped death. However, my children live in real terror. They will never forget the sound of ammunition and exchange,” he said.
The RSF and Sudan’s armed forces have been battling for power for since Saturday, and numerous attempts to pause the violence have proven futile despite expressions of support from each side.
Eyewitnesses said Thursday that reinforcements for the paramilitary RSF were on their way to Khartoum when army forces confronted them with warplanes and ground forces.
The UN has called for a ceasefire for at least three days after recent fighting to mark Eid celebrations, Secretary General António Guterres said during a press conference on Thursday.
“As an immediate priority, I appeal for a ceasefire to take place for at least three days marking the Eid al Fitr celebrations to allow civilians trapped in conflict zones to escape and to seek medical treatment, food and other essential supplies,” Guterres said.
But Sudan’s army leader Abdel Fattah Al Burhan told Al Jazeera that RSF troops need to withdraw from the cities if there is to be any truce, which the RSF pushed back against, saying they “will not withdraw or give up their right” to defend themselves, in a statement to CNN.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the death toll in Sudan as of Thursday has risen to 331, with another 3180 injured, according to spokesman Tarik Jašarević in a statement to CNN.
A water and electricity crisis has continued in Khartoum, with food shortages in shops and pharmacies closed, eyewitnesses say. Fuel is also in short supply with gas stations shut since Saturday.
Intisar Muhammad Khair told CNN that she and her daughters were stranded for four days in her three-storey house in the center of Khartoum, until they managed to escape during Wednesday’s truce. “(This was) after I lost hope of survival and began prayers and supplications that we die in decent fashion, especially when our stocks of food and water had run out,” she said.
“The most dangerous thing that frightened us was the presence of an armored vehicle of the RSF under our house,” she said, adding that she “saw corpses dumped in the streets and military vehicles burned” as they made their escape.
With gas stations closed, those with fuel in their vehicles have had greater opportunities to flee the danger. “So many people can’t drive out because they don’t have petrol but for us, thank God, we took the car that has petrol,” Hadeel Mohamed, a 28-year-old architect, told CNN after leaving the city.
“We packed our bags and the few necessities and that and we left. We went inside the neighborhood we did not take the main streets,” she said.
“There are very few people now, the whole neighborhood left. Everyone with a family has left.”
She said many in the city have felt unprotected by the armed forces as they engage in combat with the RSF. “The army started a war in a city where citizens are, and didn’t release a statement prior to the citizens saying ‘you need to be aware some clashes will happen,’” she said. “That kind of left us saying: ‘who are you and who are you fighting for really?”
At least nine children have reportedly been killed and more than 50 injured amid the ongoing fighting in Sudan, according to a statement from UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell on Thursday.
“We have received reports of children sheltering in schools and care centers while fighting rages around them, of children’s hospitals forced to evacuate as shelling moves closer, and hospitals, health centres and other critical infrastructure damaged or destroyed, limiting access to essential and lifesaving care and medicine,” Russell said.
Sudan’s Doctor’s Union has meanwhile said that 52 hospitals are out of service in the capital and adjacent areas, equating to about 70% of hospitals in the region.
Nine hospitals were bombed, and 19 were subject to forced evacuation, according to the union.
The union also said that five ambulances had been attacked by military forces, and others were prevented from transporting patients for treatment and delivering aid. Attiyah Abdullah, general secretary of the Preliminary Committee of Sudan’s Doctors Union, said in an interview that there are “very few hospitals still in operation, and those that are, are on the edge of collapse.”
As facilities run low on supplies, the violence is blocking aid from being delivered to hospitals, Save the Children Sudan country director Arshad Malik told CNN on Thursday.
Malik said that while the hospitals were without blood bags used in transfusions and short on diesel to power generators, Save The Children is relatively well stocked in the city but transport and access were the problems.
“We have the supplies, and we have the emergency support staff. They are ready, but they are stuck at home for now. We will see if they can move and give the supplies to different hospitals,” he said.
“Children are seeing bullets and mortars hitting their houses,” Malik added. “There is constant fighting and shelling around them.”
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, is vying for power against Sudan’s military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with forces loyal to each man battling violently for control.
Hemedti is commanding his troops from the city’s Hai Al Matar neighborhood, which is close to the military headquarters, a high-ranking military official and an eyewitness told CNN on Wednesday. The military official chose to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak. The eyewitness, who saw Hemedti’s convoy, requested anonymity out of fear for their safety.
A latest attempt to strike a ceasefire for 24 hours was quickly upended late on Wednesday, when clashes erupted north of Khartoum. Each faction previously accused the other of breaking another failed truce on Tuesday.
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Fighting still continue in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum
Despite the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) declaring they were ready to follow a three-day ceasefire with the army to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid, sporadic fighting is still occurring in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum.
The UN and several countries have been trying to persuade the two sides to agree to a truce.
The RSF said it had been forced to act in “self-defence” to repel what it described as a coup attempt – but it would abide by the truce.
The army chief, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, made no mention of a ceasefire in a pre-recorded speech that has been posted on the army’s Facebook page.
He said he remained committed to restoring Sudan to civilian rule, and called for everyone to abide by the slogan “One army, One people”.
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Khartoum residents flee as ‘hellish’ conditions in Sudan continue
Sudan’s conflict between the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues for a sixth day.
Due to the chaos, residents have been fleeing Khartoum, and this is due to fear about dwindling food supplies and the collapse of medical services.
According to Norway’s ambassador to Sudan Endre Stiansen, the current conditions are “hellish”.
Per reports, about 270 people have died as a result of the unrest happening.
Sudan’s paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces on Wednesday said it set up a call centre to receive distress calls from the citizens and foreigners in the capital, Khartoum.
“The room operates under the supervision of a force comprising various legal, medical and rescue teams, a direct communication mechanism is allocated to serve 24/7, to provide humanitarian aid and contribute to evacuations and resolve insecurities,” the group said in a statement posted on Twitter.
It said the room was located in the RSF’s controlled areas in Khartoum.
Meanwhile, the Libyan National Army (LNA), a group of armed forces loyal to Gen Khalifa Haftar, has denied providing support to a rival party in Sudan amid the deadly fighting.
Gen Haftar heads Libya’s parallel government in control in the east of the country, but which is not recognised by the international community
“The General Command categorically denies reports of providing support to one party against the other,” LNA spokesman Ahmad Mesmari is quoted as saying in statement by the Reuters news agency.
He said the army was ready to play a mediating role between the rival parties in Sudan.
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Ceasefire broken as death toll reaches 270 amid Sudan’s unrest
Gunmen reportedly broke into the residences of those who work for the United Nations and other international organizations on Tuesday, amid contradicting reports of a mutually agreed ceasefire in the nation. Gunfire, explosions, and overhead fighter jets could be heard around Sudan’s capital Khartoum at the time.
The country’s armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in fighting in Khartoum, which has been going on for four days now close to the army command, the presidential palace, and two RSF camps to the north and west of the capital.
After agreeing to a 24-hour ceasefire that began at 6 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET), the two sides’ attempts at a truce failed late on Tuesday as fighting broke out again in central Khartoum, according to witnesses.
Residents remain trapped in the middle elsewhere in Sudan; Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a lack of medical supplies, blood and electricity are threatening lifesaving treatments in Sudan, adding that 11 have died from their injuries in North Darfur and the western region’s the last running hospital has received dozens of wounded patients in the past 48 hours.
At least 270 people have been killed and more than 2,600 injured in the unrest, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) officials citing Sudan’s Ministry of Health Emergency Operations Center.
Armed personnel raided the homes of UN staff and employees of other international organizations in downtown Khartoum, according to reports in an internal UN document seen by CNN.
According to the document, the gunmen sexually assaulted women and stole belongings including cars. “In Khartoum armed uniformed personnel, reportedly from RSF, are entering the residences of expats, separating men and women and taking them away,” reads the report. One incident of rape was also reported.
The RSF denied those reports, telling CNN in a statement that it “will never assault any UN staff or employees. RSF is very mindful of respecting international law.”
The statement went on to blame the opposing side in the fighting, led by Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan: “That is the new desperate way of Burhan’s army of fighting. They supply their people RSF uniform clothing so they can commit crimes against civilians and embassies and other groups including the UN so the image and perspective of RSF can be damaged to everyone, international and local.”
Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) denied their troops were involved in the violations and pointed to a previous statement regarding crimes against humanity allegedly committed by RSF forces.
Khartoum has been wracked by violence and chaos in a bloody tussle for power between Burhan, Sudan’s military chief, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who is head of the RSF.
The two leaders have traded blame for instigating the fighting and breaking temporary ceasefires.
Colonel Khaled Al-Aqeel, a SAF spokesman told Al Jazeera they were keen on continuing the truce on Tuesday, shortly after sounds of gunfire were heard in the country’s capital.
RSF commander advisor Mousa Khaddam also said the paramilitary force is also committed to the truce, telling al-Jazeera: “Our forces that are deployed in multiple regions in Khartoum are committed to the ceasefire.”
Yet fighting appeared to continue hours after the truce was meant to go into effect. An eyewitness told CNN that they heard sounds of explosions around the Army General Command building and the Presidential Palace in Khartoum.
For more than three days, students at the University of Khartoum have been trapped inside campus buildings as artillery and gunfire rain down around them in Sudan’s capital. “It is scary that our country will turn into a battlefield overnight,” said 23-year-old Al-Muzaffar Farouk, one of 89 students, faculty members and staff sheltering inside the university library.
Food and water are running low, but leaving is not an option – one student has already been killed by gunfire outside. Khalid Abdulmun’em had been trying to run to the library from a nearby building when he was struck, said Farouk.
The students retrieved his body and brought it inside “despite the bullets that were falling on us,” he added.
The university confirmed Abdulmun’em’s death in a Facebook post, saying he had been shot in the campus’ surroundings. In a separate post on Monday, the university urged humanitarian organizations to help evacuate dozens of people stranded on campus.
Eyewitnesses described the scenes across the Sudanese capital.
“I can see outside smoke rising from buildings. And I can hear from my residence blasts, heavy gunfire from outside. The streets are totally empty,” said Red Cross staffer Germain Mwehu from Khartoum.
“In the building where I stay, I saw families with children, children crying when there are airstrikes, children horrified,” Mwehu said, adding that people had little to no access to food or medicine given the fierce fighting outside.
Children are among those killed; a 6-year-old child died on Monday after the RSF shelled a hospital in Khartoum and damaged a maternity ward. Medics were forced to evacuate, leaving patients behind – some just newborns in incubators.
At least half a dozen hospitals have been struck by both warring sides, according to Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union.
Health services have been heavily impacted by the fighting. Cyrus Paye, Project Coordinator for MSF in El Fasher of North Darfur, said in a statement that the only remaining hospital in North Darfur is “rapidly running out of medical supplies to treat survivors.”
Other hospitals in North Darfur have had to close, either due to their proximity to the fighting, or due to the inability of staff to get to the facilities because of the violence, he added.
MSF teams are also facing “serious challenges” in other parts of the country, the statement said. The group’s premises in Nyala, South Darfur, have been looted and in the capital Khartoum most teams are trapped by the ongoing heavy fighting and are unable to access warehouses to deliver vital medical supplies to hospitals.
Multiple diplomats and humanitarian workers have been targeted.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed there was an attack on a US diplomatic convoy on Monday.
“Yesterday, we had an American diplomatic convoy that was fired on. All of our people are safe, but this the action was reckless, it was irresponsible and, of course, unsafe,” Blinken said in a press conference on Tuesday.
The European Union ambassador to Sudan was also assaulted in his residency on Monday, though he is now doing fine, according to a spokesperson for the EU’s top diplomat.
And three workers from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) were killed in Darfur, prompting the WFP to temporarily halt all services in the country.
In statements early Tuesday morning, the two rival factions pointed fingers at each other.
The RSF accused the army of conducting airstrikes on residential neighborhoods and of attacking the EU ambassador’s headquarters in Khartoum; meanwhile, the army accused the RSF of targeting the ambassador’s residency, and of targeting the WFP’s headquarters in Darfur.
Various foreign leaders have called for peace, with Blinken speaking separately with Burhan and Dagalo on Tuesday.
Blinken “expressed his grave concern about the death and injury of so many Sudanese civilians,” and argued a ceasefire was necessary to deliver aid, reunify separated families, and ensure the safety of diplomatic and humanitarian staff, according to a readout from the US State Department.
And Egypt has been “in direct communication with both parties” encouraging restraint, cessation of hostilities and a return to dialogue,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN’s Christina Macfarlane in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
The Sudanese Armed Forces later issued conflicting statements on a proposed 24-hour ceasefire, intended to go into effect later on Tuesday.
A statement citing a spokesperson on the official SAF Facebook page said the armed forces are “not aware of any coordination with mediators and the international community about a truce” and that the RSF announcement for a 24-hour truce “aims to cover up the crushing defeat it will receive within hours.”
But Burhan told CNN earlier that the SAF will “adhere” to a ceasefire proposal by the tripartite mechanism, comprising of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), the African Union (AU), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Dagalo meanwhile said on Twitter that a 24-hour ceasefire “to ensure the safe passage of civilians and the evacuation of the wounded” was approved by the paramilitary force.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the conflict in Sudan on Tuesday, saying that medical supplies have been depleted, there is a lack of medical personnel on the ground and some health care facilities have been looted or are being used for military purposes.
Volker Perthes, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Sudan, said on Monday the organization has been trying to convince the two rival parties to “hold the fire” for a period of time, and asked them to protect embassies, UN offices, humanitarian and medical facilities.
Both sides had previously agreed to a three-hour ceasefire on Sunday, and again on Monday, with fighting resuming afterward, Perthes said.
But both Burhan and Dagalo have since accused the other of breaking that ceasefire.
When CNN spoke to Burhan on Monday afternoon, the sound of gunshots rang out in the background despite the supposed ceasefire – and Burhan claimed Dagalo had violated it for the second day.
A spokesperson for the RSF rebutted the accusation, claiming that they had been trying to abide by the ceasefire, but “they keep firing which leaves no choice” but for the RSF to “defend itself by firing back.”
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Lack of water and light in Sudan as combat continues
A resident of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, informed the BBC that she had run out of drinking water as violence between opposing forces has continued there for a fourth day.
“This morning we ran out,” Duaa Tariq admitted, adding that she was reserving one bottle specifically for her two-year-old child.
There are ongoing efforts to persuade the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) organization to enforce a 24-hour ceasefire.
In certain residential parts of the capital, the RSF has started plundering.
Residents of the Khartoum 2 area told the BBC that the RSF militia had been going home-to-home in the neighbourhood demanding water and food.
Heavy bombardments and black smoke can be seen around the airport, which is in the centre of Khartoum and right next to the military headquarters, as tanks are reported on some streets.
Residential areas surround the airport and staff and patients at a nearby cancer hospital say there are trapped by the fighting.
A female patient at Al-Zara Hospital told the BBC on Monday the situation was deteriorating as there were no medicine or food. The hospital is already overcrowded as it took in patients from another hospital that had come under attack by the RSF.
Lack of supplies is a problem countrywide, in up to seven states, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Now most of the hospitals are reporting [being] out of medical supplies, blood bags, oxygen and other many important medicine and surgical kits,” WHO’s Sudan representative Dr Nima Saeed Abid told the BBC’s Newsday radio programme.
UN special envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes has told the BBC that he is in daily contact with the two generals whose forces are fighting for control, but he says they are not talking to each other.
Sudan’s de facto leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, told CNN earlier on Tuesday the ceasefire would start at 16:00 GMT. Some elements of the army have denied this.
RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is better known as Hemedti and is also Sudan’s deputy leader, tweeted that he had approved a ceasefire to ensure the evacuation of wounded civilians, but said previous deals to halt fighting had been violated.
Mr Perthes said agreements to pause the fighting for several hours on Sunday and Monday were not fully observed.
The Red Cross said it was receiving multiple calls for help from people trapped in their homes by the fighting – the city has an estimated population of 10 million residents.
But the aid group said providing humanitarian support was “almost impossible”, amid airstrikes and artillery attacks.
Around 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 injured since the fighting erupted on Saturday, according to the UN.
For Ms Tariq the only safe place to be in her home is “one tiny corridor” where “we’re laying and spending the whole day” on one shared mattress.
“Most of the people [that] died, died in their houses with random bullets and missiles, so it’s better to avoid exposed places in the house” like windows, she said.
There is not sufficient light because there is no electricity, but she goes to a neighbour’s flat to charge her phone as they have a power bank.
“Last night I wasn’t able to sleep and I feel very sick,” she added.
A group in her community were forming a “crisis room,” and had “promised to provide food and water for those in need”, she said.
People are also organising anti-war campaigns online, she added.