Toll mounts in Sudanese fighting
Residents caught in crossfire as army, paramilitary force clash
KHARTOUM, Sudan — As explosions and gunfire thundered outside, Sudanese in the capital Khartoum and other cities huddled in their homes for a third day Monday, while the army and a powerful rival force battled in the streets for control of the country.
At least 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 wounded since the fighting broke out, U.N. envoy Volker Perthes told reporters. The two sides are using tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons in densely populated areas. Fighter jets swooped overhead and anti-aircraft fire lit up the skies as darkness fell.
The toll could be much higher because there are many bodies in the streets around central Khartoum that no one can reach because of the clashes. There has been no official word on how many civilians or combatants have been killed. The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate earlier put the number of civilian deaths at 97.
The sudden outbreak of violence over the weekend between the nation’s two top generals, each backed by tens of thousands of heavily armed fighters, trapped millions of people in their homes or wherever they could find shelter, with supplies running low and several hospitals forced to shut down.
Top diplomats on four continents scrambled to broker a truce, and the U.N. Security Council was set to discuss the crisis.
“Gunfire and shelling are everywhere,” Awadeya Mahmoud Koko, head of a union for thousands of tea vendors and other food workers, said from her home in a southern district of Khartoum.
She said a shell struck a neighbor’s house Sunday, killing at least three people. “We couldn’t take them to a hospital or bury them.”
In central Khartoum, sustained gunfire could be heard and white smoke rose near the main military headquarters, a major battlefront. Nearby, at least 88 students and staff members have been trapped in the engineering college library at Khartoum University since the start of fighting, one of the students said in a video posted online Monday. One student was killed during clashes outside and another wounded, he said. They do not have food or water, he said, showing a room full of people sleeping on the floor.
Even in a country with a long history of military coups, the scenes of fighting in the capital and its adjoining city Omdurman across the Nile River were unprecedented. The turmoil comes just days before Sudanese were to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.
The power struggle pits Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the armed forces, against Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group. The former allies jointly orchestrated a military coup in October 2021. The violence has raised the specter of civil war just as the Sudanese were trying to revive the drive for a democratic, civilian government after decades of military rule.
Under international pressure, Burhan and Dagalo had recently agreed to a framework agreement with political parties and pro-democracy groups, but the signing was repeatedly delayed as tensions rose over the integration of the RSF into the armed forces and the future chain of command.
The U.S., the U.N. and others have called for a truce. Egypt, which backs Sudan’s military, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which forged close ties to the RSF in recent years as it sent thousands of fighters to support their war in Yemen — have also called for both sides to stand down.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said late Monday that Cairo was in “constant contact” with the army and the RSF, urging them to halt the fighting and return to negotiations, but both generals have thus far dug in, demanding the other’s surrender.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, tweeted that the EU ambassador to Sudan “was assaulted in his own residency,” without providing further details. EU officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Heavy gun battles raged in multiple parts of the capital and Omdurman, where the two sides have brought in tens of thousands of troops, positioning them in nearly every neighborhood.
Twelve hospitals in the capital area have been “forcefully evacuated” and are “out of service” because of attacks or power outages, the doctors’ syndicate said, out of a total of about 20 hospitals. Four other hospitals outside the capital have also shut down, it added in a statement late Monday.
On Monday, the military claimed to have secured the main television building in Omdurman, fending off the RSF after days of fighting. State-run Sudan TV resumed broadcasting.