There is a threat of civil war in Sudan – about 100 dead and 1,000 injured

Civil war is looming in Sudan. The country is in chaos. Once more.

The Sudanese armed forces under the command of de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan are in a power struggle with the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is under the command of Vice President Mohammed Hamdan Daglo. Both camps alternately spread success stories whose truth can hardly be verified. Given the confusing situation and conflicting information from both parties to the conflict, it is unclear who has the upper hand on the battlefield.

Fighting broke out in Khartoum on Saturday morning. The RSF claimed that Sudanese soldiers entered their headquarters in the south of the city. RSF troops therefore attacked the airport in the north of the city and the presidential palace. The army used artillery, fighter planes and tanks. On Sunday, fighting continued to focus on nearby army headquarters and the state broadcaster building.

Residents of the capital Khartoum reported continued gunfire and explosions. But fighting is also taking place in other parts of the country on the Horn of Africa, for example in the port city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea and in the city of Merowe, which has an important airport. The United Nations Security Council in New York plans to discuss the situation on Monday.

dead and injured

According to the Sudanese doctors’ association, 97 people have been killed in the fighting so far. As early as Monday evening, the World Health Organization reported 83 dead and more than 1,000 injured – including soldiers and civilians.

Heavy fighting in Khartoum over the weekend left hospitals in the capital, home to some six million people, completely overwhelmed.

Many of the nine clinics taking in wounded civilians have no medical supplies such as blood supply and transfusion supply. Water and power outages and a lack of fuel for the hospitals’ power generators further limited operations. Specialists such as anaesthesiologists were also missing.

The looming civil war

The fighting threatened to completely tear apart an already conflict-ridden Sudan, said Gerrit Kurtz, a political scientist at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, the German news agency. The development of the coming days is decisive.

Since the fall of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in 2019, the RSF and the military have effectively shared power in the country, but relations between the two camps have never been free of tension. In the course of the transition to civilian government, which was recently postponed again, the RSF was to be integrated into the armed forces, leading to a rift between the Allies. RSF leader Daglo, also known as Hemedti, accused General Al-Burhan of staying in power.

Kurtz explains:

In addition, both forces are well armed, even though the RSF has no air force and less heavy weapons.”

The army is full of loyal supporters of ruler Al-Bashir who was replaced in 2019, who distrust the leader of the RSF for his role in the then coup and see him as a traitor. “Army Chief Al-Burhan is acting in no small part under the pressure of these Islamist forces, which has increased in view of the possible transfer of power to a civilian government”Kurtz said. The general opposed control of the security apparatus by a transitional civilian government, “while Hemedti believed he could continue his business and operations in the gray area of ​​legality.”

Sudan is the third largest country in Africa in terms of area and has about 46 million inhabitants. The country is rich in oil and gold resources.

(yam/sda/dpa)