After two months of deadly fighting, the conflict in Sudan escalated with the assassination of a governor in the Darfur region, where testimonies of widespread violence against civilians are mounting.
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On April 15, clashes erupted in this East African country, one of the poorest in the world, between the army commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (FSR).
“Even imagining the worst, we didn’t think this war would last so long,” Mohamad al-Hassan Othman, a refugee in southern Khartoum, told AFP on Thursday.
“We don’t know if we have to go home or start a new life,” he adds.
The fighting has so far been concentrated mainly in Khartoum and Darfur, a huge border region of Chad that was already ravaged by civil war in the 2000s.
” Nothing “
The army chief on Thursday accused the RSF of capturing and killing West Darfur state governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar after he gave Saudi television a telephone interview on Wednesday criticizing the paramilitaries.
The RSF has denied responsibility for this “assassination,” but according to the United Nations, there are “convincing reports from witnesses attributing this act to Arab militias and the RSF.”
There is no scenario for a return to peace in two months’ time. In Khartoum, entire districts no longer have drinking water. Electricity runs a few hours a week and most hospitals in combat zones are out of service.
According to the latest report by the NGO ACLED, the violence claimed more than 2,000 lives.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 2.2 million people have fled, of whom more than a million have left Khartoum, while more than 528,000 refugees have arrived in neighboring countries.
For several weeks, Saudi Arabia and the US mediated in the ceasefire negotiations.
But the numerous ceasefires announced have almost never been observed, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the millions of desperate civilians.
In a new attempt at mediation, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) announced on Monday that Kenya would chair a quartet made up of Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.
The next day, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry called for the return of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir to head the committee, saying on Thursday the Kenyan government had “taken over the positions of the FSR militia” and “offered him various forms of support”. “.
According to the United Nations, almost half of the population, ie 25 million of the 45 million people in Sudan, are now dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.
“Massacre”
“Many displaced people who came from the capital lost not only all their belongings and their homes during the fighting in Khartoum, but also members of their families,” says Anja Wolz, MSF coordinator.
The organization spoke on Thursday of a “worrying increase” in people fleeing the capital.
According to the United Nations, humanitarian aid has reached up to 1.8 million people, a fraction of those in need.
A Riyadh-sponsored international conference on aid to Sudan is scheduled for June 19 in Geneva.
“Darfur is fast heading towards a humanitarian catastrophe,” warned UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths on Thursday.
“The world cannot allow this to happen. Not again,” he explained in a press release, while this region was the scene of a war in the early 2000s that left around 300,000 dead and more than 2.5 million displaced.
The head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes, said on Tuesday that the violence in Darfur could amount to “crimes against humanity”.
“Massive attacks against civilians based on their ethnic origin, allegedly carried out by Arab militias and gunmen in RSF uniforms, are of great concern,” he said.
Darfur lawyers described “massacres and ethnic cleansing” in El-Geneina, the West Darfur capital, by “cross-border militias supported by the RSF.”
In the early 2000s, General Daglo, at the head of the Janjawid Arab militiamen, implemented a scorched-earth policy against ethnic minorities in Darfur on orders from then-dictator Omar al-Bashir.
According to the United Nations, the war has killed around 300,000 people and displaced nearly 2.5 million. The Janjawid officially launched the FSR in 2013.