Civilian deaths reach 97 in Sudan

Smoke rises from a locality in Khartoum Saturday. Pic/AP

Sudan's embattled capital awoke Monday to a third day of heavy fighting between the army and a powerful rival force for control of the country, as the weekend's civilian death toll rose to 97. Airstrikes and shelling intensified in parts of Khartoum and the adjoining city of Omdurman. Rapid, sustained firing was heard near the military headquarters, with white smoke rising from the area. Residents hunkering down in their homes reported power outages and incidents of looting.

"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 Khartoum. She said a shell stuck a neighbour's house Sunday, killing at least three people. "We couldn't take them to a hospital or bury them."

The clashes are part of a power struggle between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the armed forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group. The two generals are former allies who jointly orchestrated an October 2021 military coup that derailed Sudan's short-lived transition to democracy.

Both men have dug in, saying they would not negotiate a truce, instead engaging in verbal attacks and demanding the other's surrender. On Monday, Dagalo, whose forces grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militias in Sudan's Darfur region, portrayed himself in a statement on Twitter as a defender of democracy and branded Burhan as the aggressor and a "radical Islamist."

Pro-democracy activists have noted that both generals have a long history of human rights abuses. At the same time, both men have powerful foreign backers, making them potentially susceptible to mounting diplomatic pressure to end the fighting. Since fighting erupted on Saturday, 97 civilians have been killed and hundreds have been wounded, said the Sudan Doctors' Syndicate, a pro-democracy group monitoring casualties.

Also read: Dozens killed as army, rivals battle for control of Sudan

There has been no official word on the number of fighters killed. Over the weekend, the World Food Program suspended operations in Sudan after three employees were killed in Darfur. On Monday, the International Rescue Committee also said it was halting its work because of the conflict, with the exception of a refugee camp in the southeast.

On Sunday, the warring sides agreed to a three-hour pause in fighting to allow civilians to stock up on necessities. Compliance was spotty, and there were reports of casualties during the humanitarian pause. Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy for Sudan, called out the breaches Monday and urged both sides to "ensure the protection of all civilians."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewed his call for a truce and a return to negotiations during a meeting of the Group of Seven wealthy nations in Japan on Monday. "People in Sudan want the military back in the barracks," he said. "They want democracy. They want the civilian-led government, Sudan needs to return to that path."

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