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Intense violence continues to rock Sudan a week after fighting first erupted between its army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary force.
Credit:Washington Post
More than 400 people have been killed and at least 3,500 injured in the violence, according to the United Nations.
The capital city Khartoum remains at the epicentre of the conflict, with many of its residents still stuck in their homes without access to water or electricity amid air strikes, gunfire and shelling.
Ceasefire attempt fails
Clashes have been reported across the city, dashing hopes of a 72-hour ceasefire that the RSF had said it would adhere to in honour of the Muslim holiday, Eid al Fitr.
Residents reported hearing shootouts between paramilitaries and army forces on Friday morning after it emerged the military had deployed troops on foot in the capital for the first time in the week-long fight.
A video posted on the Sudan Armed Forces’ Facebook page shows armed soldiers advancing down a road in the capital to a cheering crowd.
Another clip filmed in the residential district of Bahri, North Khartoum, captures the sound of rapid gunfire just before 6am on Friday, which was when the ceasefire was supposed to begin.
Heavy fighting was reported in Khartoum on Friday afternoon. Another video, captured around 10 miles closer to the centre of Khartoum shows black smoke billowing from a building in the north of the city while a convoy of vehicles move down the road. It’s not clear whether these are the Sudanese army or RSF.
Attempts to seize infrastructure
Both videos were filmed in areas adjacent to Khartoum International Airport, which has been one of the city’s major battlegrounds.
The warring sides are attempting to seize key infrastructure sites and the airport is one of Khartoum’s most significant – for strategic and symbolic reasons. It’s been the subject of conflicting reports from the two parties, both of whom claimed as recently as Thursday to have a presence there.
Satellite images captured of the airport show how at least 13 aeroplanes, including a military transport plane, have been destroyed in the days since the fighting began.
Slide the marker below to see how the airport looked on Wednesday compared to in November last year.
Hospitals severely impacted
Sudan’s medical facilities have also been seriously affected by the violence. The Sudan Doctor’s Union has said 70% of hospitals in areas around the fighting across Sudan are now out of use.
Some have been damaged or destroyed in shelling, others have had to evacuate all patients due to fighting while others are suffering severe shortages in staff, medicine, food and power.
The map below shows just some of those affected in Khartoum.
The group described how three hospitals in the city of El Obeid in Darfur had been severely damaged by the fighting and urged international organisations to establish humanitarian corridors as soon as possible.
How did it begin?
The conflict began in earnest on 15 April, but the power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, who leads the armed forces, and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti) have been brewing for some time.
Both men had worked together to topple former leader Omar al Bashir in 2019 but are now at odds about how they think the country should be run. Al Burhan has since become Sudan’s de-facto head of state following a military coup in 2021 and has promised to oversee the country’s transfer to civilian rule.
At the core of this dispute is a disagreement over one of tenets of the agreed framework for how that transition will be made. It relates to how and when the RSF should be integrated into the military – Hemedti wants it to take 10 years while the army wants it to be completed within two.
In the days leading up to the eruption of violence, RSF troops had been deployed around the country in a move that al Burhan called illegal.
The fighting began last week on Saturday at a military base south of Khartoum, with both sides accusing the other of initiating the attacks.
Within hours, the Sudanese Army had employed its air force to drop bombs on RSF positions inside the capital – which has a population of 10 million.
It then quickly spread across Khartoum and to cities around the country including Merowe, Nyala and El Obeid.
Al Burhan addressed the nation on Friday, telling citizens that the fighting will soon be over and that he is committed to the transition to civilian rule.
Meanwhile, the RSF maintains its claims to have taken large areas across the country, including central Khartoum.
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(File Photo)
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said the government of Pakistan is closely watching the situation in Sudan as the safety and security of Pakistanis living there is our top priority.
In a statement regarding the security and safety of Pakistanis in Sudan, he said that around 1500 Pakistanis are in Sudan and Pakistan’s Embassy in Khartoum is in constant touch with them and ensuring all possible facilities. He said the Pakistan Embassy in Sudan has created a WhatsApp Group to maintain constant contact with Pakistani citizens. He said the embassy has advised all Pakistani citizens to restrict themselves to their houses.
He said there are difficulties in the evacuation of Pakistani nationals from Sudan as roads leading to airports are not safe.
The Prime Minister said we are in contact with friendly countries and the United Nations for the safety, security, and early evacuation of Pakistanis.
He expressed confidence that Sudanese officials will take all possible measures to ensure the security and safety of Pakistani citizens.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Asad Majeed Khan, on the direction of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, held a meeting with the Sudanese Ambassador in Islamabad. He also held online meetings with the officials of the Pakistan Embassy in Sudan and discussed the evolving situation there.
Source:Radio Pakistan
U.S. Military Prepares Options For Possible Sudan Evacuation
The U.S. military is preparing options to evacuate the U.S. embassy in Sudan, the U.S. Defense Secretary said on Friday as the Biden Administration weighed whether to pull personnel out of the country’s increasingly unstable capital.
“We’ve deployed some forces into theater to ensure that we provide as many options as possible if we are called on to do something. And we haven’t been called on to do anything yet,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a news conference at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. “No decision on anything has been made.”
Forces commanded by two previously allied leaders of Sudan’s ruling council began a violent power struggle last weekend. Hundreds have died so far and a nation reliant on food aid has been tipped into what the United Nations calls a humanitarian catastrophe.
John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said President Joe Biden approved a plan this week to move U.S. forces nearby in case they are needed to help evacuate American diplomats.
“We are simply pre-positioning some additional capabilities nearby in case that they’re needed,” Kirby told reporters.
With the airport in Khartoum caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Spain have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.
Cameron Hudson, a U.S. Africa policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said the level of violence in Khartoum makes the situation for an evacuation unpredictable.
“The major challenge is there’s a war going on across all corners of the city and the international airport in the middle of the city is not functional right now, so the challenge is moving people to a safe space to evacuate them,” Hudson said.
Washington has said that private American citizens in Sudan should have no expectation of a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation from the country. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said the United States was in touch with several hundred American citizens understood to be in Sudan.
Earlier on Friday, the State Department confirmed the death of one U.S. citizen in the country.
UN WORKS TO EXTRACT STAFF
Other countries and the United Nations are also looking at how they can evacuate citizens and employees.
The U.N. has been trying to extract staff from “very dangerous” zones in Sudan to move them to safer locations, the top U.N. aid official in Sudan, Abdou Dieng, said on Thursday. Dieng said he had been moved to a safer area on Wednesday.
The U.N. has about 4,000 staff in Sudan, of which 800 are international staff. A U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were a further 6,000 U.N. staff family members and associated personnel in Sudan.
Switzerland said on Friday it was examining ways to evacuate nationals from Sudan, and Sweden said it will evacuate embassy staff and families as soon as possible.
Spanish military aircraft are on standby and ready to evacuate some 60 Spanish nationals and others from Khartoum, and South Korea sent a military aircraft to stand by at a U.S. military base in Djibouti to evacuate its nationals when possible.
Source:Reuters