Global Courant 2023-04-26 01:50:51
Sudanese caught in the crossfire struggle to find food, shelter and medical care as the conflict in Sudan continues.
Sudanese and foreigners have poured out of the capital Khartoum and other conflict zones as fighting toppled a new three-day ceasefire brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Aid agencies also expressed growing alarm on Tuesday about the crumbling humanitarian situation in a country dependent on outside aid.
Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said there are areas in the Sudanese capital where the ceasefire is not holding. Heavy clashes have been reported near the presidential palace and the army high command.
“A hospital was hit in the town of Omdurman (north of Khartoum) after an artillery attack; at least a dozen people were injured and the hospital was closed,” she said, adding that patients and injured were evacuated to another hospital 3 km away.
A series of brief ceasefires over the past week have either failed outright or led to only occasional lulls in the fighting that has raged since April 15 between forces loyal to the country’s top two generals.
The recent lulls in the fighting have spread enough for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of foreigners by air and land, which continued on Tuesday.
But they have brought little or no relief to millions of Sudanese caught in the crossfire and struggling to find food, shelter and medical care as explosions, gunfire and looters devastate their neighborhoods.
In a country where a third of its 46 million inhabitants already needed humanitarian aid before the fighting, several aid agencies have had to suspend operations and dozens of hospitals have been forced to close.
The UN refugee agency said it was preparing for potentially tens of thousands of people fleeing to neighboring countries.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization on Tuesday expressed concern that one of the warring factions had seized control of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum.
“That is extremely, extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab,” Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO representative in Sudan, told a UN briefing in Geneva via video call from Port Sudan.
He did not identify which side controlled the facility, but said they sent technicians away and the power was out, so it was not possible to properly manage the biological materials. “There’s a huge biological risk.”
Escaping the violence
Calls for negotiations to end the crisis in Africa’s third-largest country have been ignored. For many Sudanese, the departure of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners and the closing of embassies are signs that international powers expect the chaos to get worse.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman. Bus stations in the capital were packed on Tuesday morning with people who had spent the night there hoping to catch a departing bus.
Drivers increased prices, sometimes tenfold, for routes to the border crossing into Egypt or the eastern Red Sea city of Port Sudan. Fuel prices have skyrocketed, from $4.20 ($1.11 per litre) to $67 per gallon ($17.70 per litre), and food and water prices have doubled in many cases, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council .
The new 72-hour ceasefire announced by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would last until late Thursday evening, extending a nominal three-day ceasefire over the weekend.
The US said it is confident it can exert influence in Sudan to push the warring factions there to reduce their fighting.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Washington will remain involved in resolving the crisis and will continue to work with regional partners.
“We’re pretty sure we can make an impact here,” Kirby said, noting that the US helped broker a 72-hour ceasefire on Monday.
‘We have an interest here; we have a stake at the table; and we will continue to use that and the convening power of the United States to try to get these two sides together to stop the violence.
