Global Courant
CAIRO — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sudan was on the brink of a “full-scale civil war” as fierce clashes between rival generals continued unabated in the capital, Khartoum, on Sunday.
He warned Saturday night that the war between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary force is likely to destabilize the entire region, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary-general.
Sudan descended into chaos after months of tensions between army chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and his rival General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, erupted into open fighting in mid-April.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in television commentary last month that the clashes killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others. However, the death toll is very likely much higher. According to UN figures, more than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas in Sudan or have crossed borders into neighboring countries.
The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed transitional civilian government. The conflict dashed Sudanese hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy after a popular uprising in April 2019 forced the military removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
The war has turned the capital Khartoum and other urban areas across the country into battlefields.
Khartoum residents said heavy fighting raged early Sunday in the capital. The warring factions used heavy weapons in the fighting in the Kalaka district and military aircraft were seen flying over the area, said resident Abdalla al-Fatih.
In his statement, Guterres also condemned an airstrike on Saturday that killed at least 22 people, according to health authorities, in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from the capital Khartoum. The attack was one of the deadliest in the conflict.
The RSF blamed the military for the attack in Omdurman. The army, for its part, denied the allegation, saying in a statement on Sunday that the air force did not conduct any airstrikes in the city that day.
The secretary-general also denounced the widespread violence and casualties in the western region of Darfur, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the ongoing conflict, Haq said in a statement.
“There is a total disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing,” Guterres said.
UN officials have said violence in the region has recently taken on an ethnic dimension, with the RSF and Arab militias reportedly targeting non-Arab tribes in Darfur, a sprawling region made up of five provinces. Last month, Darfur governor Mini Arko Minawi said the region was slipping back to its former genocide, referring to the conflict that engulfed the region in the early 2000s.
Entire towns and villages in West Darfur province were overrun by the RSF and their allied militias, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee to neighboring Chad. Activists have reported that many residents were killed, women and girls raped, and property looted and burned.
There were clashes between the army and the RSF elsewhere in Sudan on Sunday, including North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces.
