Fires and explosions continued throughout the night in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, despite calls for a ceasefire on the fourth day of fighting between the army and paramilitaries that left at least 270 people dead and thousands injured.

Brokered by South Sudan, the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, or “Hameti”, and the armed forces under the command of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has ruled Sudan since the 2021 coup, pledged to maintain a 24-hour ceasefire , withdraw civilians from the most dangerous areas.

But at the agreed time (at 19:00 Greek time), there were still explosions, columns of smoke, the smell of burnt gunpowder and weapon explosions. “There are no signs of appeasement in Khartoum and other areas,” the UN said in the evening.

The Army and DTY were quick to accuse each other of “violating the ceasefire.”

Military planes flew over Khartoum and hit four hospitals, doctors said. Across the country – one of the poorest in the world, where the health care system has been on its knees for decades – “16 hospitals have gone out of business.”

With fighting concentrated in the capital Khartoum and the state of Darfur (west), the Red Cross and the World Health Organization (WHO) are desperately urging the warring parties to guarantee access to the health care system for all who need it.

The fighting that has raged since Saturday in Sudan has left at least 270 people dead and 2,600 injured, according to the WHO.

“I condemn all loss of life” and “we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Sudan,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday.

He also denounced the “looting of medical institutions” and “the use of others for military purposes”.

He added that the assistance distributed by WHO before the outbreak of hostilities in the country’s medical facilities had ended, and with the ongoing hostilities it was impossible to organize new supplies, and Khartoum’s hospitals lacked the necessary supplies to treat the wounded.

Aid workers and diplomats say they can no longer work in a country where one in three goes hungry. Three employees of the World Food Program (WFP) were killed in Darfur.

Residents excluded

Calls by the G7, the UN, the US and others for an end to the conflict fell on deaf ears: people in camouflage uniforms, some with turbans like nomads in Darfur, continue to spread terror in Khartoum as army airstrikes hit densely populated areas .

Many residents have been locked in their homes, without electricity or running water, and are watching their food supplies, if any, evaporate after the political conflict between the two generals dragged on and escalated into war on Saturday.

They were pressured by politicians and diplomats to agree on a timetable and terms for integrating the DTY into the regular army and restarting the country’s transition to democracy. There was no treaty, the generals drew their weapons.

On the fourth day of fighting in the few grocery stores that remained open, store owners admitted that they would not be able to hold out for long due to lack of supplies. Residents begin to flee to the countryside, to the south, where there is no fighting.

Under the sky, billowing clouds of thick black smoke from army and paramilitary headquarters, others searched for food or a generator.

In Khartoum, “we haven’t slept for four days,” said Dahlia, 37.

According to the latest UN data, the death toll in the country is 185 people. Many non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies have announced that they have suspended all activities, unable to provide assistance.

On Monday, a US diplomatic convoy came under fire and a European Union ambassador was attacked at his residence in Khartoum. Sudanese diplomacy loyal to General Burhan blamed the DTY.

Despair in hospitals

The UN said 1,800 people were injured, but there are certainly many more as access to war zones is difficult or impossible for patients and doctors.

In Darfur, the stronghold of General Daglo and his thousands of people who committed untold atrocities during the state’s 2003 war, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had transported 183 wounded, “many children among them,” in three days to her last hospital still in operation.

It is impossible to assess who controls what. The opposing sides are waging a war of contradictory statements, they say, they control the airport, the presidential palace, the headquarters of the General Staff …

The army denounces the “coup” by “foreign-backed rebels”, Hameti speaks of the struggle for “freedom, justice and democracy”.

That is, he is using the slogan of the “revolution” of 2019, sounded most recently as pro-democracy protests that want the country to end the military juntas that have held power for most of its modern history since independence in 1956.

According to the Egyptian political scientist Amr Sobaki, “the current situation is the result of the regime’s mistakes.” [Ομαρ ελ] Bashir and the transitional period in which, after the fall of Bashir (in 2019), the unification of the armed forces was to take place.

“Citizens wanted to destroy the ancien mode (the old regime), but they destroyed the political forces and the army,” he argues.

Egypt, an influential neighbor of Sudan, is multiplying contacts in the region, seeking a “return to the negotiating table.”

Source: RES-IPE