Khartoum, Sudan
Reuters
Sudan’s capital Khartoum and sister city Bahri came under renewed air attack on Friday as the war between the army and paramilitary forces entered its fifth week, deepening a humanitarian crisis for trapped and displaced civilians.
Mass looting by armed men and civilians alike is making life an even greater misery for Khartoum residents pinned down by fierce fighting between the regular military and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, witnesses said.
RSF fighters stand near the damaged Air Defence Forces command centre in Khartoum, Sudan, on 17th May, 2023, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video. PICTURE: RSF via Twitter/via Reuters
“WHERE IS THE STATE?”: MASS LOOTING ENGULFS SUDANESE CAPITAL
Mass looting by armed men and civilians is making life an even greater misery for Khartoum residents trapped by fierce fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, witnesses said.
While the RSF dominates the capital on the ground and the army conducts frequent airstrikes, the witnesses said police had simply vanished from the streets when the fighting started in Khartoum on 15th April.
“Nobody protects us. No police. No state. The criminals are attacking our houses and taking everything we own,” said Sarah Abdelazim, 35, a government employee.
As mayhem grips Khartoum, the army accuses the RSF of looting banks, gold markets, homes and vehicles. The RSF denies the charge and has released videos showing its men arresting looters. The paramilitary force say some people wear RSF uniforms and steal to make them look bad.
Some witnesses said the RSF was stealing vehicles and setting up camps in people’s houses. The RSF also denies this.
More than 17,000 men who were jailed in Sudan’s two most dangerous prisons – Kobar and Al Huda – were released early in the fighting. Both sides blame the other for the prison break.
“We are now living in the devil’s city. People are looting everything and neither the army nor the RSF nor the police, none of them want to protect ordinary people. Where is the state?” said Mohamed Saleh, 39, a primary school teacher.
Since the fighting broke out, most attention is focused on the battles, not the chaos which is demoralising the population, or the rapidly depleting supplies of food, cash, and other essentials that drive much of the looting.
Huge groups have been seen looting mobile phone, gold, and clothes stores.
Factories including a wheat mill belonging to DAL Group, the country’s largest conglomerate, were looted in Sudan’s main industrial zone, which contains key food and industrial manufacturers.
“They were brandishing machetes, they wave them in the air,” said Qassim Mahmoud, a bank general manager who passed through the zone as he fled Khartoum for Egypt and saw people carrying away sacks of wheat and large appliances.
Three commodities and storage facilities were burned down in Omdurman. On Thursday, people could be seen in a video stealing mattresses and clothes and loading them onto trucks. Others used donkey carts.
“Yesterday thieves came and burgled my house in Omdurman. Who do I complain to,” said Ahmed Zahar, 42, a trader.
Many Khartoum residents have put posts on social media seeking assistance in retrieving stolen cars.
At one bank where money had already been looted, people were also seizing televisions and furniture, said a Reuters witness.
Aid warehouses have also been targeted by the looters.
Medical aid agency MSF, one of few entities continuing to provide aid in Khartoum, said armed men had broken into its warehouse in Khartoum on Tuesday and taken two cars filled with supplies.
– KHALID ABDELAZIZ; Additional reporting by MAGGIE MICHAEL in Wadi Halfa/Reuters
The conflict has displaced an estimated 843,000 people within Sudan and put around 250,000 to flight into neighbouring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took the long-anticipated step on Friday of removing RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, from his post as his deputy on the ruling Sovereign Council.
The two had run the council since 2019 when they overthrew strongman President Omar al-Bashir amid mass protests against his rule, before staging a coup in 2021 as a deadline neared to hand power to civilians for a transition towards free elections.
There has been no breakthrough in Saudi- and US-sponsored ceasefire talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
At an Arab League meeting there on Friday, a statement by Sudan’s envoy accused the RSF of looting and rape, and of violating a succession of ceasefires.
“We trust that you will stand by the Sudanese army and will accompany us in the next step of reconstruction,” envoy Dafallah al-Haj added.
The RSF has accused the army of starting the conflict and violating ceasefires. It says that those who have committed crimes are wearing stolen RSF uniforms.
Fighting broke out on 15th April after disputes over plans for the RSF to be integrated into the army and over the future chain of command under an internationally backed deal to shift Sudan towards democracy after decades of conflict-ridden autocracy.
Burhan installed Malik Agar, leader of a rebel group who joined the council in 2020 after signing a peace agreement with the government, as his new deputy, according to a second decree.
Later that day, Burhan promoted other military officers who served on the council, including appointing General Shams El-Din Kabbashi as deputy commander of the armed forces. Generals Yasser Al-Atta and Ibrahim Jabir were each appointed assistants to the commander.
“Bodies everywhere”
Air strikes on Friday targeted districts in eastern Khartoum and witnesses reported hearing anti-aircraft weapons used by the RSF. Bahri and Sharg el-Nil across the Nile river from Khartoum were subjected to air strikes overnight and Friday morning.
“On the road I saw about 30 military trucks destroyed by [air] strikes. There were bodies everywhere, some of them army and some RSF. Some had started decomposing. It was really horrible,” said Ahmed, a young man making his way through Bahri.
The RSF is embedded in residential districts of much of Khartoum and adjoining Bahri and Omdurman, drawing almost continual air strikes by the regular armed forces.
Witnesses said the army had also started placing barriers on some roads in southern Khartoum to keep the RSF away from an important military base there.
Fighting also flared in the city of Nyala, capital of the South Darfur region in the southwest, for a second day after weeks of relative calm.
Heavy gunfire and artillery detonations went on all day in Nyala. A local market caught fire and it was difficult for those injured to get to hospitals, local activists said. The Darfur Bar Association, a human rights group, said that 27 people had been killed and dozens injured so far.
They called on the RSF, whose movements it blamed for the flare-up, to re-commit to a locally brokered truce.
Militia attacks and subsequent clashes in the West Darfur city of Geneina have claimed the lives of hundreds.
With the fighting has come a collapse in law and order, with rampant looting, blamed by the army and RSF on each other, hitting Sudanese homes, factories, gold markets, banks, vehicles and churches. A rapid dwindling of stocks of food, cash and other essentials has driven much of the pillaging.
“Nobody protects us. No police. No state. The criminals are attacking our houses and taking everything we own,” said Sarah Abdelazim, 35, a government employee in Khartoum.
Some 705 people have been killed and at least 5,287 injured, according to the World Health Organization.
The chief of the US Agency for International Development, Samantha Powers, travelled on Thursday to Chad where tens of thousands have fled fighting.
