According to media and eyewitness reports, the conflict in Sudan has seen heavy airstrikes and rocket fire in the capital Khartoum. The air force of the Sudanese army fired on targets in the center and north of the city and in the neighboring city of Omdurman. The attacks were again carried out in the immediate vicinity of densely populated residential areas.
The fighting has been going on for almost a week now. For days, the international community has been pushing for a humanitarian ceasefire, which has so far always been thwarted. It is estimated that around six million people live in the Khartoum area.
The Bundeswehr has meanwhile made preparations for a new attempt to evacuate German citizens, as a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said at the request of the German Press Agency. Details of the scope, personnel and material of possible Bundeswehr evacuation forces were not given.
International governments are preparing evacuations
On Wednesday, an attempt at a diplomatic evacuation using Air Force aircraft but without a major deployment of soldiers was canceled because the security situation in the embattled capital was too dangerous for such an operation.
The airport in the capital has been at the center of hostilities since the beginning of the conflict. Diplomats are scrambling for a resilient ceasefire for the evacuation.
The US government has also announced that the US military is preparing to evacuate embassy workers. According to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, no decision has been made yet. Armed forces have been deployed to the region to ensure that the United States has “as many options as possible” in the event of an order, he said on Friday at the Ramstein Air Force Base in Rhineland-Palatinate. “No decision has been made yet,” he said. The US State Department had previously confirmed the death of an American in Sudan.
End of the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan
Heavy fighting between the military and paramilitaries also continued in the rest of the north-east African country, despite the beginning of celebrations to mark the end of the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 413 people have been killed and more than 3,500 injured in the fighting since last weekend. Numerous health facilities should have been closed. Sudan’s Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim spoke of “a very high number of dead bodies in the streets” on Friday.
International mediators had pushed for a ceasefire during the holiday beginning on Friday at the end of the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also called for an immediate end to the violence on Friday.
A ceasefire from Friday morning (6:00 a.m. CEST), which the paramilitary unit Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had agreed to, had not been confirmed by the Sudanese military.
Instead, the residents of Khartoum, who had been holed up in their homes for seven days, reported an intensification of the fighting. “The lyrical sonority of the extended Eid prayer is punctuated by the grotesque staccato of bombardment/gunfire. Whatever hopes there were that Sudan’s generals could grant a humanitarian reprieve for this holy day have been dashed,” wrote Sudanese Kholood Khair on twitter.
President vs Deputy
In the country in north-east Africa, which has been politically unstable for years, de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who is the supreme commander of the army, is fighting with his troops against his deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, the leader of the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and its units for supremacy. The two men have led the gold and oil-rich country of around 46 million people since a joint military coup in 2019 and another in 2021.
Another United Nations employee was killed in the fighting on Friday, according to the UN Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva. The accident happened in Obeid, almost 400 kilometers southwest of the capital Khartoum. Three employees of the World Food Program died in North Dafur on Saturday. The organization then stopped its work in Sudan for security reasons.
