Global Courant 2023-05-24 04:33:04
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Sudan’s rival generals to abide by the latest ceasefire or face possible sanctions. Sudan descended into chaos after fighting broke out in mid-April between the country’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. A seventh attempt over the weekend, another ceasefire was announced.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday warned Sudan’s rival generals to abide by the latest ceasefire or possible sanctions as residents reported sporadic fighting between the sides in the capital Khartoum and a northern city.
Sudan descended into chaos after fighting broke out in mid-April between the country’s army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
At least 863 civilians were killed in the fighting, including at least 190 children, and more than 3,530 others were injured, according to the Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. The toll could be much higher, the medical group said. The conflict has also turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. At first, foreign governments rushed to evacuate their diplomats and nationals, while thousands of foreign residents rushed to leave Sudan.
More than a million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes by the fighting, including more than 840,000 who have taken shelter in safer parts of the country, and another 250,000 have crossed over to neighboring countries, according to UN figures.
In recent weeks, the United States and Saudi Arabia have brokered talks between the kingdom’s warring factions. A new ceasefire was announced last weekend – the seventh attempt to date to stop the deadly violence in the East African nation. It came into effect on Monday evening. All previous ceasefires have been violated.
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In a video message posted on social media by the US embassy on Tuesday, Blinken said the fighting was “tragic, senseless and devastating.”
The ceasefire, he said, is intended to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and restore essential services and infrastructure destroyed in the clashes.
An external mechanism, backed by the US, has been set up to oversee the ceasefire, Blinken added — a 12-member oversight committee made up of three representatives from the belligerents, three from the US and three from Saudi Arabia.
“If the ceasefire is violated, we will know and we will hold the violators accountable through sanctions and other means,” he said. “We facilitated the ceasefire, but it is the responsibility of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to implement it.”
Both sides agreed to stop hostilities and the looting of civilian property and humanitarian supplies, and to seize civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, power plants, water pumps and gas stations.
Nigerians evacuated from Sudan arrive at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Nigeria on May 5, 2023.
Aid workers and civilians have reported widespread looting in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country, along with a dire lack of basic services, medical care, food and water. The doctors’ syndicate has also said that the RSF has seized hospitals. Allegations of sexual violence against women have also been reported, including rape and gang rape in Khartoum and the restive western region of Darfur.
Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Tuesday that staff have been harassed and medical buildings and other facilities have been repeatedly looted and occupied since the fighting began. The charity, known by its French acronym Doctors Without Borders, runs medical projects in 10 of Sudan’s 18 provinces, including the capital.
“We are shocked and shocked by these deplorable attacks,” said Jean-Nicolas Armstrong Dangelser, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Sudan. “We are experiencing a violation of humanitarian principles and the space for humanitarian workers to work is shrinking on a scale I have rarely seen before.”
Residents, meanwhile, said they heard gunshots and explosions on Tuesday in parts of Omdurman, a town next to Khartoum, with military jets flying overhead. They also reported sporadic clashes around the army headquarters in Khartoum.
“Sounds of gunfights are very close,” Babakr Abdel-Rahman, a resident of Omdurman, said on the phone, to loud sounds of gunfire and aircraft in the background. “They don’t respect people’s lives.”
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Fighting was also reported in the northern city of Obeid, where RSF reportedly attacked military headquarters and other parts of the city.
Radhouane Nouicer, the UN expert on human rights in Sudan, denounced the warring factions for taking the country ‘hostage’ and described the suffering of the civilian population as ‘inhuman’.
“This is the destruction of a country in a way that is inhumane to the people,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “People feel alone and abandoned in the midst of a chronic shortage of food, drinking water, destroyed homes, indiscriminate attacks in residential areas and widespread looting; the entire country is being held hostage.”
The weeks-long conflict has exacerbated the already dire humanitarian disaster in Sudan, prompting the UN to update its humanitarian response for 2023.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that the number of people likely to need aid this year rose 57% to 24.7 million people, or more than half of the country’s population. That will require $2.6 billion, a 47% increase over pre-war estimates, it said.
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The US said it would allocate $245 million in additional aid to Sudan and neighboring countries affected by the conflict. That brings the U.S.’s total humanitarian aid commitment to Sudan and neighboring Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic to nearly $880 million by 2023, the State Department said.
