Fighting raged in Sudan on Monday, on the 100th day of a war that still appears hopeless and without a victor and with every hour that passes a child being killed or injured, the UN said.
• Also read: Sudan: At least 87 bodies buried in mass grave in Darfur
• Also read: More than 3 million people have fled the war in Sudan
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Since April 15, the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo have been repeating that they want “victory or die”.
According to a grossly underestimated report, at least 3,900 people died because the bodies strewn on the streets are inaccessible.
According to UNICEF, “at least 435 children” were among them, and at least 2,025 others were injured.
“Every day children are killed, injured, abducted and all they are left with are schools, hospitals and damaged or looted infrastructure,” the UN agency continues.
parents, grandparents and grandchildren
“Parents and grandparents who have lived through previous cycles of violence are now witnessing their children and grandchildren go through the same horrific experiences,” UNICEF laments.
The UN agency says it detects “2,500 serious violations of children’s rights, at least one every hour” and certainly “many more in reality” while 14 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance.
More than 3.3 million people have fled their homes in Sudan – more than 700,000 of them abroad. And millions more have collapsed into starvation.
AFP
More than half of Sudan’s 48 million people now need humanitarian assistance to survive, but NGOs and the UN are struggling to help them due to a lack of official approval and funding from international donors.
For the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), “Sudan is on the brink of collapse, grappling with a series of crises that, taken together, are unprecedented”.
“The first 100 days of war brought terror and devastation and the next 100 will surely be even worse. The violence continues and the next few weeks could bring devastating floods, displacement and epidemics,” the NGO adds.
A humanitarian situation that makes us fear the worst when the summer and its rains in Sudan are generally the season of famines and epidemics, from malaria to cholera, but which does not make the belligerents back down.
blocking the way for “mercenaries”.
Even as the country’s myriad rebel groups try to hold their ground, new fronts regularly open up: On Monday, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-North) led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu besieged Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, residents say.
Late Sunday, one of the army’s top commanders, General Yasser Atta, violently attacked Kenya, which had recently offered to send an African peacekeeping force.
“He is even said to send the Kenyan army and the armies of the countries that support him, and all the other mercenaries with him. None of their men will come back,” he said in front of his men.
The army is now being attacked on many fronts. Unable to gain a foothold in Khartoum, where its airstrikes are failing to change the stranglehold of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries on the ground, the country is now trying to cut them off from their supplies.
AFP
For weeks, the FSRs have been harassing them in El-Obeid, the capital of Nordkordofan, 350km south of Khartoum and on the road connecting the capital to Darfur, a major stronghold of the FSRs and General Daglo.
On Monday, authorities announced that they had closed the Khartoum-Darfur expressway because “it is being used by the rebels to transport goods looted by civilians and to bring mercenaries into Sudan.”
The army added: “Any vehicle driving there will be a military target.”