The killing of Hemedti, the general commander of the Sudan Armed Forces, and his endgame in a civil war?

Residents in the Sudanese capital Khartoum woke up Monday to the sounds of artillery and bombardment by warplanes, as intense fighting continued for a third day and the death toll neared 100, with hundreds more injured.

Clashes first erupted Saturday between the country’s military and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who told CNN on Sunday the army had broken a UN-brokered temporary humanitarian ceasefire.

Verified video footage shows military jets and helicopters hitting the airport; other clips show the charred remains of the army’s General Command building nearby after it was engulfed in fire on Sunday.

“For the second day in a row, amid the absurd and bloody fighting between the People’s Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, there is a large number of deaths and moderate and critical injuries,” the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said in a statement posted overnight.

The WHO said hospitals were suffering shortages of specialized medical personnel, including anesthesiologists. “Water and power cuts are affecting the functionality of health facilities, and shortages of fuel for hospital generators are also being reported,” the WHO said on Sunday.

He speculated that the army chief and his rival, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had lost control of the military. When asked if his endgame was to rule Sudan, Dagalo said he had “no such intentions,” and that there should be a civilian government.

On the State of the Civil War in Sudan: The Changing Face of the 2021 Sudan War and the Status of the International Assistance Mission (ISAM)

Amid the fighting, civilians have been warned to stay indoors. One local resident tweeted that they were “trapped inside our own homes with little to no protection at all.”

We can’t hear any sound other than blast after blast. What exactly is happening and where we don’t know, but it feels like it’s directly over our heads,” they wrote.

Access to information is also limited, with the government-owned national TV channel now off the air. Television employees told CNN that it’s in the RSF’s hands.

The crisis has worsened since the turn of events because a third of the population needed food aid. Aid groups have stopped their operations because of the violence. Three workers of the United Nations World Food Program were killed.

The international aid agency said that the UN and other humanitarian facilities have been looted, and that the WFP-managed aircraft was damaged by gunfire in Khartoum.

Mexico is trying to get people out of Sudan, with the country’s foreign minister saying Sunday that they may have to explode.

The United States embassy in Sudan said Sunday there were no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation yet for Americans in the country, citing the closure of the Khartoum airport. It said that if private US citizens became necessary, it would make an announcement.

There have been calls for peace and negotiations. The head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, is scheduled to arrive in Khartoum on Monday, in an attempt to stop the fighting.

Four years ago, almost to the day, the people of Sudan were celebrating a revolution after overthrowing longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Now the East African country faces the possibility of a complete collapse similar to the chaos we see today in Yemen or Libya.

The UN’s political mission in Sudan has said the country’s two warring factions have agreed to a “proposal” although it is not yet clear what that entails.

Until recently, Dagalo and Burhan were allies. The pair worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021.

It is not clear how much control the RSF has. Burhan repeatedly disputes the claim that he controls the country’s main military sites.

The hospital is near Sudan’s army headquarters, and medics said it was treating wounded soldiers and their families. The maternity ward was hit in the shelling and the wall there collapsed, according to employees.

Both leaders are responsible for inciting the fighting and breaking temporary ceasefires. Meanwhile, civilians are paying the price, with at least 180 people killed and 1,800 others injured, according to UN officials on Monday.

Witnesses have little doubt about what happened at Al-Moallem hospital, where intense shelling forced staffers to evacuate, leaving some patients behind.

At one overwhelmed medical center, the morning began with shelling. One doctor said that a paramilitary force barged into the building, ordered newborns and other patients to be evacuated, and began taking up positions.

Children are among those killed; a 6-year-old child died on Monday after the RSF shelled a hospital in Khartoum and damaged a maternity ward. Medics were forced to evacuate, leaving patients behind – some just newborns in incubators.

At first we were praying for salvation,” the medic said. We started to pray that the most painless part of the body would die painlessly because of the shelling.

“Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel,” another medic said. “The smell of death was everywhere.”

“Food in the fridge and freezers have gone bad,” Eman Abu Garjah, a Sudanese-British doctor based in Khartoum, told CNN. We don’t have much at the moment and we’re trying to go somewhere where the shops are open.

“It’s Ramadan, we’re up for early morning prayers and after that usually you have a little bit of a siesta and wake up again for the afternoon prayers. It wasn’t possible to sleep. The house was rattling and the windows were shaking.”

Sudanese paramilitary leader says the war was fought out by a terrorist leader, Aharonov-Mumford

Burhan said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he believed the paramilitary leader tried to capture and kill him during an attempt to seize the presidential palace.

“Yesterday and today a humanitarian ceasefire proposal was put forward and agreed upon,” said Burhan from army headquarters, as gunshots rang out in the background.

He said that he did not abide by the ceasefire. There are indiscriminate mortar attacks and attempts to storm the Army headquarters. He’s using the humanitarian pause to continue the fight.”

In a telephone interview with CNN on Sunday, Dagalo said that they were being attacked from all directions. “We stopped fighting and the other side did not, which put us in a predicament and we had to keep fighting to defend ourselves,” he claimed.

During Sudan’s Darfur conflict, starting in the early 2000s, he was the leader of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed forces, implicated in human rights violations and atrocities.

In 2007, its troops were included in the country’s intelligence services and in the same year, it was formed a paramilitary group led by him and named the RSF. Dagalo turned against Bashir in 2019.

At least 120 people died in a pro-democracy sit-in in Khartoum in the months before the coup that ousted Bashir in April.

Violence grew outside of Khartoum. Parts of Sudan such as Darfur saw a new round of conflict between ethnic groups orchestrated by RSF troops. The conflict in Sudan forced over 350,000 people to flee.

There were fighting in the capital of Sudan on Saturday. The two sides battled for control of the nation’s airports, bases and military compounds. Violence erupted in the streets of the country.

“The hospital turned into a battlefield,” said the doctor, Musab Khojali, an emergency room physician at the Police Hospital in Burri, northeast of the capital, Khartoum.

Thousands of wounded in the conflict between Sudan and the United States: U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Sudanese army, and US ambassador Cyrus Paye

Leaders from around the world called for a cease-fire, but it was not clear who, if anyone, was in control of Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country, by area.

In the place where I stay, there were families with children crying and children horrified as the fighting raged outside.

“Everyone is afraid,” said Ahmed Abuhurira, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer who went out to try to charge his cellphone. “You can see it in their eyes. People are afraid.

Only the army has aircraft, and on Monday, General Hamdan accused his rival of “bombing civilians from the air.” The Sudanese Army said it was operating in accordance with international humanitarian law.

António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said he had spoken with both warring generals and expressed deep concern. The humanitarian situation in Sudan was already dangerous, he said.

Blinken “expressed his grave concern about the death and injury of so many Sudanese civilians,” and argued a ceasefire was necessary to deliver aid, reunify separated families, and ensure the safety of diplomatic and humanitarian staff, according to a readout from the US State Department.

Mr Perthes said that the leaders of the military groups had made it clear that they had no intention of stopping the fighting, and that he was talking to them daily. They are, however, receptive to the idea of a “pause” to allow humanitarian access, he said.

“For the past three days,” he said in a statement, “people across Sudan have been gripped by fear, not knowing if it is safe to leave their homes, and now having to make the choice between facing that fear and starving to death.”

Cyrus Paye, a coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in North Darfur, said in a statement that most of the wounded there were “civilians who were caught in the crossfire — among them are many children.”

The EU ambassador to Sudan was beaten up in his residency on Monday, but he is doing well.

The attack of the Rapid Support Forces group on Sudan’s airport by the Sudanese president has provoked a strongman backing a military-backed regime

Several officials said that the attackers were members of the Rapid Support Forces group, speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.

According to the U.N. spokesman, staff in Sudan were being forced out of their apartments by armed men.

With concern growing that the conflict could affect other countries, observers were paying close attention to Egypt, which is entwined into its neighbor’s affairs.

Since 2019, when pro-democracy protesters forced Sudan’s autocratic president to step down, Egypt has been eager to keep a civilian-led democracy from taking root on its southern doorstep, analysts have said. Ruled by a military-backed government that came to power after its own antigovernment uprising in 2011, Egypt has sought to replicate similar leadership in Sudan.

Egyptian officials see a strongman as the best way of keeping its neighbor stable — and off a democratic path that could inspire Egyptians — and they have embraced General al-Burhan as an ally, especially after one Rapid Support Forces faction captured Egyptian soldiers and seven Egyptian warplanes over the weekend.

The fighting makes it hard to transit in and out of the country. The plane was targeted again at the main airport in Khartoum as the military groups battled for control of critical infrastructure.

The New York Times, using satellite imagery, has identified 20 planes that have been destroyed or badly damaged at the airport since the conflict erupted.

In Sudan, democracy is not enough: The event of Monday morning in Omdurman, Sudan, revealed by a Sudanese citizen

Residents of Omdurman, a city northwest of the capital, said that on Monday the situation was quiet with many people leaving their homes and traffic building in some shopping areas. Many households, however, still lacked water or electricity.

In the capital, many residents found it safest to stay home. Mr. Abuhurira, the electrical engineer who went out to charge his phone, said that in the half-hour he spent on the street, he encountered almost no one.

Some activists stopped partnering with the US and came to see the UN mission as a roadblock to democracy because of these policies. I felt sorry when I spoke with the best American and foreign diplomats, who also understood the international policy in Sudan wouldn’t work. They were forced to carry out decisions made above them as they saw the flaws but felt powerless to dissent.

It was a moment of promise because there was hope for democracy. I remember walking around the “sit-in” — a giant carnival of freedom in the middle of Khartoum that protesters had blocked off to demand change. It was powered on by electricity.

But social movements such as the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) — the union behind the protest — often struggle to translate the momentum of their demonstrations into real political power.

The reason for this is, in part, structural. The social movements such as the SPA are often based on grassroots activism. A dictator is able to arrest a few leaders of an organization, but not the entire country.

Any momentum that pro-democracy advocates had during the negotiations was stamped out in June 2019 when RSF soldiers violently dispersed the sit-in. More than 100 people were killed.

Sudan’s political and economic models were not good because of the 30 years of dictatorship. Burhan and Hemeti stopped the big reforms from being made.

Hamdok often told me that revolutions come in cycles. The 2019 removal of Bashir was a high point of revolution, and he saw his job as making as many reforms as possible before the low tide of counterrevolution swept him away.

The Campaign against Repression and Assassination: How the Sudanese Revolutionary Warfares Human Rights and the Future of the Free Restoration of Human Rights

Soldiers committed atrocities against civilians. I remember drinking tea with a soldier aligned with the RSF at his house in Darfur as he explained why he had recently participated in the burning down of a village from another ethnic group.

RSF-aligned forces avenged the death of a member of their tribe by burning a village that had been home to 30,000 people. At least 163 people died.

There were increasing tensions between the SAF and RSF. Hemeti and the RSF were viewed as undisciplined by Burhan. Hemeti thought that it was time for Sudan to lead.

I and many others argued that restarting the transitional period was not smart and wouldn’t work. Returning to a government led by Burhan was clearly not going to usher in democracy. If the plan ended in a coup the first time, why would it work the second time?

It can be easy to look at the recent history of revolutions in countries such as Sudan and find that they will eventually backfire. I do not agree. I learned from Sudanese activists that a nation’s political fortune is an active battle.

Fighting in Sudan against the army: student deaths and civilian casualties in a high-suddefniq military-military clash

For more than three days, students at the University of Khartoum have been trapped inside campus buildings as artillery and gunfire rain down around them in Sudan’s capital.

Fierce fighting between the country’s army and a paramilitary group has spread across the nation since erupting Saturday – but the university area is a particular hotspot due to its proximity to the General Command of the Armed Forces, with warplanes hovering overhead and nearby buildings destroyed by fire.

89 people are inside a university library, among them a young man who is scared that the country will turn into a battlefield overnight.

One student has already been killed outside, and leaving is not an option because of the food and water shortage. Khalid Abdulmun’em had been trying to run to the library from a nearby building when he was struck, said Farouk.

The death of Abdulmun’em was confirmed in a Facebook post by the university. In a separate post, the university asked humanitarian organizations to help evacuate people from the campus.

The war for power between the leader of Sudan’s military and the leader of the RSF has caused chaos and wreaked havoc in Khartoum.

There was an American diplomatic convoy that was fired on. The action was reckless, it was irresponsible and it was unsafe, as per the statement issued by Tony Blinken on Tuesday.

The RSF accused the army of conducting airstrikes on residential neighborhoods and of attacking the EU ambassador’s headquarters in Khartoum; meanwhile, the army accused the RSF of targeting the ambassador’s residency, and of targeting the WFP’s headquarters in Darfur.

In his own statement, Dagalo said the RSF “will have another call” to continue dialogue. Burhan spoke to Blinken about the critical situation in Sudan.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/africa/sudan-fighting-intensifies-students-intl-hnk/index.html

UN Secretary General spokesman Volker Perthes asks for the immediate end of hostilities between the G7 nations in a statement

The foreign ministers of the G7 nations urged the sides to cease hostilities immediately in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Volker Perthes, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Sudan, said on Monday the organization has been trying to convince the two rival parties to “hold the fire” for a period of time, and asked them to protect embassies, UN offices, humanitarian and medical facilities.