Bodies of people in military uniforms lie on the streets of Omdurman on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital, witnesses said on Thursday, as the United Nations expressed concern about intensifying fighting in the Darfur region in the seventh month of war between the army and the Sudanese capital expressed by paramilitaries.
• Also read: Kenya: 15 dead in floods caused by heavy rains
• Also read: “Imminent and large-scale” attack: Washington is concerned about the situation in Darfur
• Also read: Number of people forcibly displaced worldwide reaches record high
Clashes continue in Khartoum and its suburbs and in Darfur in the west of the country, while a new round of negotiations sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United States ended this week without success in agreeing a ceasefire.
“After the fighting yesterday (Wednesday), bodies of people in military uniforms lie in the streets of the city center,” witnesses in Oumdurman told AFP, reached by telephone from Wad Madani, south of Khartoum.
Others reported that a shell hit AlNau Hospital north of Omdurman, the last operational medical facility in the region, killing a health care “worker.”
The UN also expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
“Hundreds of thousands of civilians and displaced people are now in grave danger in El-Facher, the capital of North Darfur, as the security situation rapidly deteriorates (and there are shortages of food and water”), wrote on X (ex-Twitter). ) Toby Harward, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Darfur.
“The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army are fighting for control of the city and this will have a catastrophic impact on the civilian population,” he added.
For its part, the US Embassy expressed “grave concern about reports of serious human rights violations by the RSF” in Darfur.
She reports “particularly killings in the Ardmata region of West Darfur state” and is concerned that leaders and members of the Massalit, one of the largest non-Arab ethnic minorities in West Darfur, are “being targeted.”
The Sovereignty Council, the country’s highest authority, announced on Monday the death of “a pillar of the civil administration in West Darfur (…)”, murdered by the RSF, which had “attacked houses in the Ardmata region”.
“His son and eight of his grandchildren were also killed,” added this panel, chaired by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane.
The war between the army and General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo’s RSF, which began on April 15, left more than 9,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which is considered to be a vast underestimate.
In addition, more than 6 million people were displaced and most infrastructure was destroyed.
The United Nations sounded the alarm on Thursday about the growing influx of people fleeing fighting into South Sudan. These include both Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returning to their country.
“The number of people arriving in South Sudan increased by at least 50% in October compared to September,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said in New York, saying 366,000 men, women and children had crossed the border South Sudan since April 15th.
“As the conflict moves closer to the south (Sudan), it could lead to even more displacement,” he warned.