A patchwork of ceasefire between two rival Sudanese generals was held in several parts of the capital on Wednesday night, as residents desperately sought to escape the city after five days trapped in the conflict. chaotic fighting with water and food reserves dwindling.
Evacuation from the capital Khartoum has proved extremely dangerous since conflict broke out over the weekend between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Force. But after days of huddling inside, often when fighting broke out in the streets outside, an increasing number of Sudanese and foreigners are trying to flee the city of 5 million people.
Nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 3,000 injured since fighting broke out on Saturday, the World Health Organization said. Many residents in the vicinity of Khartoum, where there was little fighting, left the city on foot, by bus and by car, taking the roads along the Nile that led north to Egypt. or Port Sudan, or to the safer areas of the south.
Conditions have deteriorated at breakneck speed in Sudan, even by the standards of modern warfare. Khartoum was already a fragile city before fighting broke out on Saturday, with frequent power outages and soaring food prices. It is now in the hands of two well-equipped, warlike forces, led by generals Who were planning for conflict for monthsdespite negotiations that Western intermediaries hope will see Sudan’s transition to a civilian government.
As conditions in the city worsened, with reports of gunmen breaking into homes and attacking civilians – including a European ambassador – several countries took action to help. help their citizens. But the challenges are steep.
Khartoum’s international airport, where heavy fighting destroyed at least 19 parked planes, was closed to all traffic.
Japan became the first country to announce plans to evacuate its citizens – although it is unclear how – and Germany is said to have sent three planes, only to stop the rescue while they were en route.
The US State Department said it had no government-coordinated evacuation plan and urged Americans in Sudan to shelter in place. The embassy in Khartoum declined to say how many Americans are in the country. But a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that during the Covid pandemic, the embassy counted about 19,000 Americans in Sudan, many of them carrying two nationality.
Security officials said many people could have escaped if the latest ceasefire was implemented.
“It’s civilians’ biggest chance,” said Dale Buckner, of Global Guardian, a US-based security firm that has organized four overland evacuations since Saturday. He said the evacuees had already arrived in Egypt and Eritrea.
But widespread violence across Khartoum has made evacuating residents much more difficult in recent days. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “We don’t want to put agents and their employees at risk.”
On Wednesday night, the Sudanese military agreed to the Rapid Support Force’s proposal for a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire to allow civilians to evacuate or replenish their supplies. But with a similar attempt failing a day earlier, it is unclear whether the truce will hold.
From early in the morning, fighter planes attacked the international airport in an attempt to destroy the RSF fighters dug in it. RSF forces in trucks parked in nearby streets, among houses where many residents were cowering, tried to shoot down the fighter with anti-aircraft guns.
Between mobile gunfights, sniper fire from tall buildings, and unpredictable air strikes, civilians seem to face threats from all directions.
“It’s a very bleak and dangerous situation,” said Ghazali Babiker, head of Doctors Without Borders in Sudan. The chaos has prevented its doctors from treating patients or moving supplies. “We were paralyzed,” he said. “We can’t move.”
In an upscale residential area in Riyadh, paramilitary troops have placed rocket launchers in front of homes, prompting families to abandon them for fear of air strikes. In Nyala, in the southwest of the country, a resident said that the RSF was searching offices and markets.
On the campus of Khartoum University, dozens of students and staff members were trapped for nearly four days, forced to hide, cook and pray in the basement of the library.
Al-Muzzafar Mohammed, one of the students, said: “All this was made possible by the shaking of the building and the sound of clashes. Mr. Mohammed said about 90 of them managed to evacuate on Tuesday afternoon, but one student was shot dead on Sunday and buried on campus.
Two high-ranking European Union officials have been attacked in recent days, one with a gunshot wound and a convoy carrying US citizens hit by bullets while heading towards an American compound in Khartoum. Aid groups have reported house raid by soldiers and worker deaths.
Many of these attacks are attributed to the RSF, which said on Twitter that it had created a hotline to receive “complaints and distress calls from citizens” – an announcement that drew a mocking response from some residents.
The turmoil also deepened in the western region of Darfur. In the city of El Faster, Doctors Without Borders said it had treated 220 injured civilians, 34 of whom died from their injuries. In another city, Nyala, looters cleared out warehouses filled with medical supplies.
“They took everything away,” Dr. Babiker said.
The RSF announced it will transfer a group of detained Egyptian soldiers to Khartoum, where they will be handed over to Egyptian authorities “when the appropriate opportunity arises”. Egypt has said that the soldiers, held at an air base about 200 miles north of the capital, had arrived in Sudan for joint military exercises, and denied RSF fighters’ claims that Egypt Egypt supported the army during the war.
A few hours later, the Egyptian media reported the first wave of troops landed back homeand the second one is expected to happen a few hours later.
The United States and other countries have continued to call on the two generals to join the war, the Army’s Commander-in-Chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the leader of the paramilitary force, Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, to cease fighting.
The spokesman for the Japanese government discussing the evacuation plan, Hirokazu Matsuno, told a news conference that about 60 Japanese nationals in Sudan were safe, although many were struggling with wage shortages. food and serious drinking water.
Other countries remain cautious, at least publicly, about their plans.
Germany flew three transport planes to Sudan to evacuate about 150 of its citizens, only to abort the plan during a refueling stop in Greece. German news magazine Der Spiegel report. Citing mission security, the German Defense Ministry did not confirm the cancellation.
Christopher F. Schuetze, Shashank in Bengali And Abdi Latif Dahir contribution report.
