A month into Sudan’s brutal war, no end in sight

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) – One month since Sudan’s conflict erupted, its capital is a desolate war zone where terrorized families huddle at home as gun battles rage, while the western Darfur region has descended into deadly chaos.

Residents of Khartoum have endured weeks of desperate food shortages, power blackouts, communications outages and runaway inflation.

The capital of five million, long a place of relative stability, has become a shell of its former self.

Charred aircraft lie on the airport tarmac, foreign embassies are shuttered and hospitals, banks, shops and wheat silos have been ransacked by looters.

Violence also renewed in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, leaving hundreds killed and the health system in “total collapse,” medics said.

Fighting continued on Monday, with loud explosions heard across Khartoum and thick smoke in the sky while warplanes drew anti-aircraft fire, according to witnesses.

“The situation is becoming worse by the day,” said a 37-year-old resident of southern Khartoum who did not wish to be named because of safety concerns.

“People are getting more and more scared because the two sides... are becoming more and more violent.”

Another witness reported “clashes with various types of weapons” in Omdurman, the capital’s twin city.

Battles erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

What remains of the government has retreated to Port Sudan about 850 kilometers (500 miles) away, the hub for mass evacuations.

The United Nations says more than 700,000 people have been internally displaced by the fighting, and nearly 200,000 have fled Sudan for neighboring countries.

There are fears for the stability of the wider region.

“We’re left on the street, in the sun,” complained Hamden Mohammed, who escaped the Khartoum area for Port Sudan. “We want the organizations to evacuate us from Sudan, because the country is totally devastated. There’s no food, no work... nothing.”

Around 1,000 people have been killed, mainly in and around Khartoum as well as the ravaged state of West Darfur, according to medics.

Violence on Friday and Saturday in El Geneina, the West Darfur capital, killed at least 280, according to the Sudanese doctors’ union.