The armed conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FAR) claimed at least 35 lives in the greater Khartoum area this weekend after an exchange of blows between the two factions. Almost all of those who died were civilians, including at least two children, according to the emergency committees in the two places attacked.
Far from bringing calm, daily bombings and episodes of violence have been increasing in this African country in recent weeks, and its residents are on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, according to the world’s main aid agencies. This weekend’s casualties add to at least 5,000 recorded by the United Nations since hostilities began on April 15, including 435 children. The conflict has left more than half of Sudan’s 48 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. According to the United Nations, 6.3 million of them are “one step away from famine.”
The first episode of this weekend was an army airstrike this Saturday in Al Kalakla al Qubba, a residential area in the southwest of the capital. According to the Al Kalakla and Khartoum South Emergency Committee, an initiative of volunteer health workers that has been organizing aid for civilians in the region since the outbreak of war, there were 23 dead, including two children and a woman.
The victims were taken to the mortuary of one of the capital’s last remaining hospitals. “There are many bodies that were burned and destroyed by the bombings and were not transported there,” the committee warned in a statement. Eleven deaths were initially reported, but the total rose as more bodies were found in the rubble.
The first reports of this bombing, including from the media office of the Kalakla al Qubba Resistance Committee – one of the pro-democracy groups that has been organizing humanitarian aid since the outbreak of the war – indicate that the target of the airstrike was an informal market. It is a place where goods from looting and the black market are traded in FAR-controlled areas and where militia members usually stay. This committee has mentioned on its social networks that paramilitaries were among the victims and that a school was also damaged, but no further information was provided.
The second attack was also carried out this Sunday by the army in Omdurman, one of the three cities that make up the capital complex of Khartoum on the banks of the Nile. There, residents were awakened by the sound of another airstrike that targeted rebel positions but also affected this residential area, killing 12 civilians and wounding “dozens” of them, some in serious condition, according to that district’s resistance committee. Several witnesses reported to the AFP agency about “artillery and rocket fire from the army.”
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The international community accuses the paramilitaries and their allied militias of committing ethnically motivated killings in the punished Darfur region, a FAR stronghold and the scene of serious massacres for more than two decades. In fact, the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into alleged war crimes. However, the regular army has also been accused of abuses against civilians, such as the July 8 airstrike that killed two dozen civilians.
The Sudanese army, under the command of General Abdel Fattá al Burhane, controls the airspace and often carries out airstrikes, such as this weekend. The FAR, led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, dominates the streets of the capital, where fighting rages. Those who have chosen to stay despite the constant fighting face daily power and water outages and risk falling victim to bombings or crossfire.
However, most of the population has left the city. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the state of Khartoum tops the list of states with the most displaced people: they represent more than 72% of all displaced people, with more than 2.7 million people having to flee violence. The total number in the country exceeds 3.8 million people and about another million have crossed the borders into other neighboring countries where reception conditions are also poor.
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