Sudanese civilians in danger due to fierce fighting in Khartoum. sudan war news

Beirut, Lebanon On December 9, at least 28 people were killed and several injured in an army airstrike on a fuel station in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

The army said it was targeting fighters of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group with which it has been at war since April 2023.

Speaking a few weeks after the attack, Mohammed Kandasha, a physician in the area, recalls treating people with severe burns at a nearby hospital.

Among them were men, women and children, symbolizing the indiscriminate attacks carried out by both sides in the Sudanese war.

“The RSF cares neither about civilians nor about the military,” he told Al Jazeera.

increasing violence

According to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, more than 26,000 people died from April 2023 to June 2024 in Khartoum state alone, while thousands more died from conflict-related causes such as disease and starvation.

Since the army announced a major offensive to retake Khartoum from the RSF on 25 September, the humanitarian crisis has worsened.

Recent fighting has resulted in extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate attacks that have killed large numbers of civilians, and put local relief workers at increased risk.

The army and the RSF are former allies who helped their former boss, President Omar al-Bashir, thwart a democratic transition following popular protests in April 2019.

Four years later, the RSF and the army went at each other in a bid for dominance. After the first year of fighting, the RSF captured most of Khartoum and appeared to dominate the conflict.

Then, in early October, the army recaptured several strategic neighborhoods and three bridges in the national capital region, including the Three Cities, Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman.

As the fighting escalates, civilian casualties appear to be rising rapidly, said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“Since October, there has been a significant increase in violence,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I think we’re seeing the use of drones, rockets and ground rockets as well as a lot of barrel bombs in Khartoum,” Osman said.

Barrel bombs are unguided bombs filled with explosives and shrapnel and dropped indiscriminately from helicopters and aircraft.

Throughout the war, rights groups and United Nations experts have accused both sides of abuses such as executions, summary executions, and torture of detainees.

According to Human Rights Watch, Al Jazeera’s own reporting, and local monitors, the RSF has been accused of ethnically cleansing communities in the western region of Darfur and systematically mass raping women and girls.

major violation

After the army captured Khartoum’s Halfaya neighborhood in early October, most residents rejoiced at being freed from a year and a half of RSF abuses and atrocities.

However, reports soon emerged alleging that dozens of people suspected to be associated with the RSF had been killed after the army advanced.

“This is beyond despicable and a violation of all human rights norms and standards,” Radhoune Nouiser, the U.N. expert on Sudan, said in a statement.

“The incident happened while people were still celebrating that the army had liberated them,” said Mokhtar Atif, a spokesman for the Emergency Response Room (ERR), a local relief effort that has been assisting civilians.

“The army killed these people… because they thought they were working with the RSF,” he told Al Jazeera from France, where he is now based.

Sudanese army spokesman Nabil Abdullah denied responsibility for the incident and said the army never attacks civilians, adding that RSF fighters sometimes pretend to be civilians when they are injured in airstrikes.

“We do not commit violations against civilians. “The militias (RSF) are the ones who target civilians by killing them, displacing them and looting their belongings,” Abdullah told Al Jazeera.

On 10 December, the military-aligned governor of Khartoum said that the RSF killed 65 people in Omdurman.

Eyewitnesses condemned the attack as “terrorism”.

“Whenever the army advances on the RSF, the paramilitary forces respond by killing civilians,” said Badawi, a local relief worker, who declined to give his last name because of the sensitivity of talking to journalists in the war zone.

Al Jazeera sent an email to the RSF’s media office asking for a response to reports that the RSF deliberately targets civilians. The media office had not responded by the time of publication.

endangered and overwhelmed

Human rights monitors, NGOs, and analysts all accuse the military of preventing relief agencies from conducting humanitarian operations in RSF-controlled areas.

They also accuse the RSF of creating a hunger crisis by looting aid and food markets, destroying crops and taxes by attacking agricultural land, and disrupting aid convoys.

A UN panel of experts on Sudan said in October, “Both the SAF and the RSF, along with their foreign supporters, are responsible for the apparent deliberate use of starvation, crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law.”

Local and international relief workers told Al Jazeera that civilians in RSF areas are almost entirely dependent on the ERR, a network of community relief groups that has led the humanitarian response since the war began.

On Thursday, ERR teamed up with the World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF to finally deliver 28 trucks of life-saving aid.

Hajouz Kuka, ERR spokesman in Khartoum, said it was the first time that WFP had delivered aid from army-controlled areas to RSF areas in Khartoum.

But both sides in the war still target aid workers.

ERR spokesman Atif said civilians in Khartoum North are now particularly vulnerable because the area is the epicenter of the conflict.

He told Al Jazeera that at least 30 of the 69 local relief workers killed in the battle by the army and RSF were from Khartoum North.

Additionally, aid workers are struggling to evacuate civilians in Khartoum North after the RSF commander ordered the evacuation of several areas – and thousands of people – this month, Atif said.

Roads out of Khartoum North are dangerous due to military airstrikes and the presence of RSF fighters, who rights groups have accused of indiscriminately looting and killing and randomly raping women and girls.

“There is a lot of army shooting on the streets, and the RSF being there means anything can happen to us,” said an aid worker in Khartoum North. Whose identity Al Jazeera is not publishing for the safety of that person.

Safe exit?

The only safe route out of Khartoum north is through Sharq al-Nile (East Nile), where relief workers are already overwhelmed by thousands of people fleeing Gezira state, where the RSF has been occupying for almost a year. Is committing murders daily. At first, local activists and witnesses said.

Atif said the ERR has only been able to evacuate about 200 people from Khartoum North to Sharq al-Nile due to lack of resources, calling on NGOs or UN agencies to support the Khartoum North ERR by intervening to protect civilians. requested.

Evacuating without military approval could be dangerous and access to aid groups could be restricted, Osman said.

Last year, the army admitted attacking a humanitarian convoy belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross that was on its way to rescue about 100 people from an active conflict zone in Khartoum, according to the Sudan Tribune.

Two aid workers were killed and seven people were injured in the attack.

In Sharq al-Nile, RSF arrested several ERR volunteers for no identifiable reason, Atif said.

He speculated that some RSF fighters were looking to extort a quick ransom and intimidate the ERR.

“These are just citizens helping their communities. There is no reason for them to be in danger,” Atif told Al Jazeera.

“It should be the opposite. They should be given access, money and permits (to do their work).”