DUBAI (Reuters) – Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces clashed on the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday, undermining a truce in an 11-day conflict that civilian groups fear could renew the influence of ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his government. loyal.
Adding to these fears, the military confirmed that the 79-year-old Bashir had been transferred from Khartoum’s Kober Prison to a military hospital, along with at least five of his former officials, prior to the start of hostilities on April 15.
Airstrikes and artillery have killed at least 459 people, injured more than 4,000, destroyed hospitals and limited food distribution in the vast country where a third of the 46 million people already depend on humanitarian aid.
Foreigners fleeing Khartoum described corpses littering the streets, buildings burning, residential areas turned into battlefields and young men wielding large knives.
The White House said a second American had died there.
“It was terrible,” said Thanassis Pagolatos, an 80-year-old Greek owner of the Acropolis Hotel in Khartoum, after arriving in Athens on the lap of his relatives.
“It has been more than 10 days without electricity, without water, and almost five days without food,” he added, describing the shooting and shelling. “Really the people are suffering, the Sudanese people.”
Over the weekend, thousands of prisoners were released from jail, including a former minister in Bashir’s government who is likewise wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
At least one other of the group taken to the hospital is wanted by the ICC.
The transition plan is disabled
Bashir’s three-decade reign ended with a popular uprising four years ago. He was in prison, with periods in hospital, on Sudanese charges related to the 1989 coup that brought him to power.
“This war, which was sparked by the deposed regime, will lead to the collapse of the country,” said the Sudanese Forces for Freedom and Change, a political grouping leading an internationally backed plan for the transition to civilian rule.
The plan was derailed by the outbreak of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both parties and the FCC missed the April deadline to begin the transition to democracy, largely because of disagreements over integrating security forces.
Civil groups have blamed groups loyal to Bashir for seeking to use the conflict to find a way back to power. The RSF, whose leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, rose to power under Bashir but was later ousted, is fiercely opposed to the Islamists who backed the autocratic former president in the military.
In its statement, the committee added that the fighting “will not solve the main issues that the civil and military parties have been trying to resolve through the political process, especially the security and military reforms that will lead … to a unified, professional army.”
In Khartoum, which with its sister cities is one of the largest metropolitan areas in Africa, the release of prisoners – blamed by various factions – has led to a growing sense of lawlessness. Residents reported increasing insecurity, with looting and gangs rampant.
exodus
Foreign powers have evacuated thousands of diplomats and citizens in recent days.
Sudanese and citizens of neighboring countries flock. Cairo said more than 10,000 people have crossed into Egypt from Sudan in the past five days, while an estimated 20,000 people have entered Chad. Others fled to South Sudan and Ethiopia, despite difficult conditions there.
A Reuters reporter said the renewed fighting Wednesday was mostly in Omdurman, one of the twin cities of Khartoum, where the army was fighting RSF reinforcements coming from other regions in Sudan.
The army and the Rapid Support Forces agreed to a three-day truce, which is set to expire late Thursday, following diplomatic pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The army has accused its rivals of using the calm to replenish supplies of men and weapons.
Thanks to the ceasefire, fighting between army soldiers and the RSF has remained quieter in central Khartoum.
The UN special envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the ceasefire “seems to be holding in some parts so far”.
However, he said that neither side showed willingness “to negotiate seriously, indicating that both sides believe that achieving a military victory over the other is possible.”
The army, led by Major General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, took control in a coup with the support of the Rapid Support Forces, two years after the overthrow of al-Bashir in 2019.
Al-Bashir’s whereabouts came into question after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, announced that he had left Kober prison with other former officials.
Al-Bashir has been accused by the International Criminal Court in The Hague of genocide, and Haroun has been accused of organizing militias to attack civilians in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. It declined to comment on the situation.
(Reporting by Mehmet Emin Kaleskan, Omer Berbroglu, and Deniz Uyar in Istanbul, Michelle Nichols in New York, and Tala Ramadan in Dubai). Written by Michael Georgy. Editing by Simon Cameron Moore
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