Sudan needs more help as fighting intensifies in Khartoum

The United Nations said on Wednesday that more than half of Sudan’s population was now in need of help and protection as civilians sought refuge from airstrikes and sporadic clashes between rival military factions in the Khartoum region.

Residents say electricity has been cut and there is a lack of food and clean water as the violent power struggle is now in its second month, despite international mediation efforts.

In Geneva, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 25 million people were in need of help, the highest number ever recorded in Sudan. Before the conflict, the number was around 15 million. The agency has launched an appeal for $2.6 billion in aid.

Signaling the continuation of the conflict between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), anti-aircraft guns and drones were heard in the capital on Wednesday, residents said.

“We’ve been moving from place to place over the last few days,” Abbas al-Sayyed, 27, told Reuters, speaking by phone from Bahri, a city near the capital Khartoum, the epicenter of a conflict that has killed hundreds of people in the people.

“There is no electricity, no water, and even the bread we had in the early days of the war, we can’t have it now,” he said.

The army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has used airstrikes and bombing in an attempt to root out the RSF fighters, under the command of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who are entrenched in residential areas of Khartoum.

Across Sudan, fighting has displaced an estimated 1 million people, 220,000 of whom have fled to neighboring countries.

US-Saudi-brokered talks in Jeddah have so far failed to secure a ceasefire.

The two sides last week agreed on a declaration of principles on the protection of civilians and the provision of aid, but agreements for humanitarian corridors and a truce pact are still under discussion. Several previous ceasefire agreements have been violated.

The conflict will likely be on the agenda of an Arab summit hosted by Saudi Arabia on Friday. Sudan is expected to be represented by special envoy Dafallah Alhaj, while Burhan, the de facto head of state, will remain in Sudan.

“We live in very difficult conditions, there are daily clashes, airstrikes and power outages,” said Saad Eldin Youssef, a 45-year-old resident of Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum.

“We don’t feel safe, we are in a state of fear, rapid support forces are scattered on the ground around us and planes are continuously carrying out attacks on neighborhoods.”

Source: Terra

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