Sixth day of fighting and shooting in the center of the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, and other areas of the country, this Thursday while many of its inhabitants try to flee the city on the eve of the Eid al Fitr festival (end of fasting), which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The situation in Khartoum and its sister cities, Omdurman and Bahri, is extreme because since the start of the clashes between military rivals, everything has been lacking: running water, electricity, medicine and food.
Armed clashes began last Saturday between the Sudanese Army and the powerful Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group that have left almost 330 dead and 3,200 injured, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Eastern Mediterranean. Nine hospitals have been hit by artillery and 16 have had to be evacuated, according to the Sudan Doctors Union, and none are fully functional inside the capital.
"It is an unprecedented, very serious, chaotic situation, and no one expected that such intense fighting would suddenly begin in the main cities of the country," said the executive head of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in East Africa, Jairo Gonzalez. The Sudanese Doctors Union assured today that 70% of the 74 hospitals located in Khartoum and in areas affected by the conflict are out of service. "I would say that the health collapse occurred on day one of the conflict," stressed the Spanish aid worker, who has worked on Sudan for the last ten years, in a telephone conversation with Efe from Nairobi.
Several UN organizations and agencies have been forced to suspend their operations. Humanitarian aid is crucial in a country where more than one in three people go hungry in normal times. González affirmed that "for the moment" MSF maintains its operations.
There was no sign of a truce in the capital, with a population of five million, where the fighting resumed on Thursday morning. "At 4:30 a.m. we were woken up by the sounds of air raids. We closed all the doors and windows because we were afraid that a stray bullet would pass through," Khartoum resident Nazek Abdallah, 38, told France Presse. Gunshots were heard in Bahri and residents reported violent clashes west of Omdurman, where they said the army had moved in to block the arrival of FAR reinforcements.
However, a few tens of kilometers from the capital, life goes on and houses are opened to house the displaced. Thousands of Khartoum residents are trying to escape the city, on foot or by car, under crossfire between the army and paramilitaries. A very dangerous adventure. Traumatized, many walked for hours, because a liter of gasoline is priced at $10 in one of the poorest countries in the world.
They had to move between the corpses that abound on the roadsides and the charred armored vehicles and trucks with heavy weapons, as well as avoid the most dangerous areas, recognizable from afar by the thick columns of black smoke that emanate. "Life is impossible in Khartoum," Alawya al-Tayeb, 33, told France Presse on Wednesday on her way south. "I did everything so that my children did not see the corpses" because they are already "traumatised".
Most people leaving the capital have been able to get through, but some have been stopped at checkpoints, according to residents and social media posts. "There is no food, the supermarkets are empty, the situation is not safe, honestly, so people are leaving," a Khartoum resident named Abdelmalek told Reuters on Thursday.
In recent days, between three and four attempts at a 24-hour ceasefire have failed, with both sides accusing each other of having broken them. Again on Thursday, the heads of the UN, the African Union, the Arab League and other regional organizations will meet to call for a new cessation of violence, as Muslims around the world prepare to celebrate Eid el Fitr on Friday. or on Saturday.
In the streets strewn with rubble it is impossible to know who really holds the main institutions of the country. Announcements of victories and mutual accusations rain down from both sides. But no one can check what is circulating on social networks since the danger is permanent.
