Sudan’s devastating war raged into a third month on Thursday as the reported death toll topped 2,000 and after a state governor was killed in the Darfur region.
Since April 15, the Sudanese Armed Forces headed by Sudanese Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been locked in fighting with paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
The fighting has driven 2.2 million people from their homes, including 528,000 who have fled to neighboring countries, the International Organization for Migration said.
Photo: AP
“In our worst expectations, we didn’t see this war dragging on for this long,” said Mohamad al-Hassan Othman, who is among more than 1 million civilians who have fled heavy fighting in the capital, Khartoum.
Everything in “our life has changed,” he said. “We don’t know whether we’ll be back home or need to start a new life.”
The death toll has risen higher than 2,000, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project’s figures from June 9 show.
In long-troubled West Darfur State, the violence claimed the life of Sudanese Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, hours after he made remarks critical of the paramilitaries in a telephone interview with a Saudi television channel.
“Compelling eyewitness accounts attribute this act to Arab militias and the RSF,” the UN said.
The Darfur Lawyers Association said it was an act of “barbarism, brutality and cruelty.”
Al-Burhan accused his paramilitary foes of the “treacherous attack.”
The RSF denied responsibility and said it condemned Abakar’s “assassination in cold blood.”
Sudan analyst Kholood Khair of Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory said that the “heinous assassination” was meant “to silence his highlighting of genocide ... in Darfur.”
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said that the situation in Darfur was “rapidly spiraling into a humanitarian calamity.”
“The world cannot allow this to happen. Not again,” he said in a statement, describing the reality there as a “living nightmare.”
US and Saudi Arabian mediation efforts are at a standstill after the collapse of multiple ceasefires in the face of flagrant violations by both sides.
The East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has attempted to restart discussions, announcing this week that Kenya would chair a quartet including Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan tasked with resolving the crisis.
In a statement on Thursday, the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is loyal to al-Burhan, “objected to Kenya’s chairmanship,” adding that Nairobi had “adopted the positions of the RSF militia, sheltered its people and offered them various forms of support.”
The office of Kenyan President William Ruto — who has met RSF and senior army officials in recent weeks — released a draft communique of the IGAD meeting that said quartet leaders would “arrange [a] face-to-face meeting between [al-Burhan and Daglo] ... in one of the regional capitals.”
A Sudanese official said on condition of anonymity that al-Burhan “will not sit at the same table” as Daglo, as fighting shows no signs of abating.
A record 25 million people — more than half the population — are in need of aid, the UN said, adding that it has received only a fraction of the funding needed.
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