Life in Khartoum reshaped by combat
Capital of Sudan has faced most intense fighting
‘We are feeling increasingly desperate, as there’s no end in sight.’
TAGREED ABDIN, who has been sheltering in Al-Diyum, a neighborhood close to Khartoum’s airport
Nurses maneuver through gunfire and shelling to make house calls, delivering babies and providing care to those who can’t reach hospitals. Families barely eat in order to conserve dwindling food and water supplies as temperatures rise. And the few good Samaritans who venture out to help the elderly or put out a blazing fire face intimidation and arrest by the fighters in the streets.
It’s been almost a month since the rivalry between two generals burst into an open war in Sudan, plunging the country deep into a humanitarian crisis and reshaping life in one of Africa’s largest and most geopolitically important nations.
The Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has endured the most intense fighting, prompting embassies and the United Nations to evacuate their nationals and staff members — leaving behind millions who now face shortages of water, food, medicine, and electricity.
The clashes — between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces — have continued despite repeated cease-fires purportedly agreed to by both sides.
Talks that began in Saudi Arabia last weekend between the warring parties, brokered by Saudis and Americans, have so far yielded no breakthrough — even though these talks have only the modest goal of reaching an actual cease-fire, to allow humanitarian aid into the country.
“We are feeling increasingly desperate, as there’s no end in sight,” said Tagreed Abdin, a 49year-old architect who has been sheltering with her three sons and husband in Al-Diyum, a neighborhood close to Khartoum’s international airport, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting.
Abdin, who spoke by phone, said she spends most of her days shuttling her boys from one side of their apartment to the other as shelling volleys overhead. When things grow quiet, she allows them to sit by the open windows to escape searing heat.
“It’s an unseen tragedy,” she said, adding that she has started to prefer the noise of war over the humming silence. “At least when there’s gunfire, I know they are running out of ammunition.”
The Sudanese army launched a concerted push into central Khartoum on Wednesday, using ground troops backed by armored vehicles to push into areas that have been largely controlled by the RSF since the war started, said two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified because of its sensitivity.
The army’s drive appeared to be an effort to gain ground before any potential cease-fire deal is signed, both people said. An agreement remained out of reach as of late Wednesday, but appeared to be getting closer, they said.
Four years ago, Khartoum was at the heart of a popular uprising that promised to usher in democracy after decades of dictatorship in the northeast African nation of 45 million people. But in the last month, the city of about 5 million people, which sits at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile, has become the center of a violent power struggle between General AbdelFattah Burhan, the head of the military, and Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The paramilitary fighters have extended their grip on the capital, controlling roadblocks. They have also been accused of looting and turning hospitals and apartments into defensive positions. The army is mostly shelling from the air.
The clashes have spread to several towns and regions and have raged in Bahri and Omdurman, Khartoum’s adjoining cities across the Nile. At least 600 people have been killed and more than 5,000 others injured, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. The conflict has displaced more than 700,000 people, according to the United Nations, and 160,000 others have fled to bordering nations, many of them encumbered with their own economic and political crises.
Residents of Khartoum say they have stayed behind either because they are sick, caring for aging relatives, or lack passports or money for transportation. Others, like Abdin, opted to stay after hearing of people being attacked and robbed on the road and spending long days at border crossings.
Yet by remaining, they are stuck in the crossfire and the deteriorating situation on the ground.
Water and electricity infrastructure has been damaged. Banks have been looted, and ATMs are wrecked. Phones and Internet networks are patchy, cutting off communication and hindering mobile money transactions that act as a lifeline. Factories and businesses have been destroyed and looted, depriving many of income in an economy that was already in distress.
On social media, people plead for painkillers or eye drops and seek suggestions on where to find running water or to bury a relative in neighborhoods under siege from snipers.
It is now difficult to reach any residents by phone. But Abdin provided a glimpse of what she saw recently when she drove out of her apartment for the first time since the fighting began April 15 to find medicine for her 80-year-old mother, who is bedridden and has high blood pressure. The streets near her home, usually clogged with people and traffic, were deserted, she said. A building several doors down from her place was damaged by shelling. Trash and debris were piled on the corner. Taxis thronged a fuel station looking for gasoline. A crowd hoped a bakery would open and offer some bread.
“It was totally surreal,” Abdin said.
As the fighting has intensified, hospitals, clinics, and laboratories, which were already operating under strain, have increasingly come under attack.
A majority of the city’s health facilities have closed, the UN said, and only 16 percent are operating normally. The Sudan Union of Pharmacists said Khartoum’s central medical supplies facility, which holds crucial medications for diabetes and blood pressure, closed after it was seized by the Rapid Support Forces.
The UN Population Fund also said that medical care for 219,000 pregnant women in Khartoum alone had been disrupted, with supplies “running dangerously low.” More than 10,000 women are in immediate need of obstetric care, including cesarean sections.