Witnesses said the looting by large numbers of gunmen and civilians is adding to the misery of life for the beleaguered residents of Khartoum, due to intense fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces.
On Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the conflict has displaced around 843,000 people inside Sudan and some 250,000 have fled to neighboring countries.
Today, Friday, the army commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, took a long-awaited step by dismissing the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, from the post of Deputy Head of Power. Sovereignty Council.
The two have led the council since 2019, after the overthrow of former President Omar al-Bashir amid mass protests against his rule.
The fighting erupted on April 15 after disagreements over plans to integrate the RSF into the army and the future chain of command under an internationally-backed deal for Sudan’s transition to democracy.
Later that day, Al-Burhan ordered the promotion of other military officers among the members of the Sovereignty Council, so he appointed Lieutenant General Shams al-Din Kabbashi as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and appointed Lieutenants Yasser al-Atta and Ibrahim Jaber as assistants to the Commander-in-Chief.
The strikes targeted areas in eastern Khartoum. Witnesses reported hearing the sound of anti-aircraft weapons used by the Rapid Support Forces. Bahri and Sharq al-Nil, across the Nile from Khartoum, were also subject to airstrikes last night and Friday morning.
corpses everywhere
Ahmed, a young man driving through the town of Bahri, said he saw about 30 military trucks on the road destroyed by airstrikes. He added that he had seen dead bodies everywhere, some of them army soldiers and members of the Rapid Support Forces, and some of them had started to decompose, calling the case of “awful”.
Witnesses said the army had also started erecting roadblocks on some roads south of Khartoum to keep the RSF away from a major military base.
Fighting also broke out in Nyala town, the capital of South Darfur state and one of the country’s largest towns, for the second day after a relative calm that lasted for weeks.
It comes as ceasefire talks, sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the United States, continue in the city of Jeddah.
About 705 people have been killed in the conflict and at least 5,287 have been injured, according to the World Health Organization.
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