According to the World Health Organization, at least 83 people have died and more than 1,126 others have been injured in the fighting in Sudan. This was announced by the WHO in Geneva. People have died in the state of Khartoum with the capital of the same name, in South Kordofan, North Darfur and other regions since last Thursday.
According to the WHO, the hospitals in the Sudanese capital, which is home to around six million people, are overwhelmed by the heavy fighting in Khartoum over the weekend. Many of the nine hospitals taking in injured civilians lack blood, transfusion supplies and other medical supplies. Water and power outages and a lack of fuel for the hospitals’ power generators made operations even more difficult. Specialists such as anesthesiologists are also missing.
In recent days, the long-simmering conflict between Sudan’s de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, leader of the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has escalated. The military apparatuses of both camps fight each other with heavy artillery, tanks and air raids, among other things. Due to ongoing fighting in densely populated parts of the city, even higher casualties are feared.
Political scientist: Conflict could ‘tear apart’ Sudan
According to experts, the outbreak of violence could plunge Africa’s third largest country by area into a long crisis. The fighting has the potential to tear Sudan apart, said Gerrit Kurtz, political scientist at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, the German Press Agency. The decisive factor is the development of the coming days. “This includes which of the two parties gains control of the state institutions in the center of Khartoum and which wins the struggle for domestic and international legitimacy.”
“Years of competition between the two security forces, which were only held together by a partnership of convenience against civil society, is now erupting in open hostility,” explained Kurtz. “Both forces are well armed, although the RSF does not have an air force and has less heavy weapons.”
The military is riddled with loyalists of the former long-term ruler Al-Bashir. “They don’t trust Hemedti, the leader of the RSF, since his role in ousting Al-Bashir in 2019 and see him as a traitor. Army chief Al-Burhan is acting not least under pressure from these Islamist forces, who are looking at the possible transfer of power to a civilian government,” said Kurtz. “Al-Burhan balked at the control of the security sector by a transitional civilian government, while Hemedti believed he could continue his business and operations in the gray area of legality.”
