Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Reuters
Intense clashes could be heard in Sudan’s capital on Tuesday, residents said, after military factions battling for more than six weeks agreed to extend a ceasefire aimed at allowing aid to reach civilians.
The army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces agreed to extend a week-long ceasefire deal by five days just before it was due to expire late on Monday.
Fanna Hamit, 58, a Chadian widow who hosts in her compound a family of 11 Sudanese who fled the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, washes the dishes while Saboura Ahmed, 30, one of her Sudanese refugee guests, parcels roasted large crickets to sell as snacks, in the yard of her house near the border between Sudan and Chad in Koufroun, Chad, on 11th May, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra
SUDAN REFUGEES STRAIN CASH-STRAPPED CHAD’S HOSPITALITY
There used to be one family in Fanna Hamit’s compound, now there are 11 families struggling to get by selling roasted crickets after she took in relatives fleeing the conflict in Sudan.
They are among 90,000 people who have escaped to Chad since fighting broke out in Sudan in mid-April – a major extra burden on one of the world’s poorest countries.
Even before this emergency, Chad was hosting 600,000 refugees from its war-torn neighbours and grappling with a fourth consecutive year of acute food shortages. Overall, around 2.3 million people are in urgent need of food aid, the World Food Programme warned earlier in May.
“The extraordinary hospitality of the Chadian government and its people has been demonstrated yet again…but the scale of this crisis requires more funding to save lives,” UN aid agency OCHA said in a call for increased international support.
Hamit, a 58-year-old widow with six children of her own, has had to make careful economies to provide for those sheltering in her compound, most of whom arrived in this border village of Koufron with nothing.
Squeezed into the open-air compound, the women cook together over small braziers in the sand as children play around them.
“They share everything with us: their food, their toilet, their clothes and all the rest,” said 78-year-old Kaltouma Yaya Abderahmane, who pitched up at Hamit’s door in the middle of the night in late April.
The sudden arrival of large numbers of people has also distorted the market for goods and squeezed water supplies in Chad’s remote and arid borderlands.
“Let’s not even talk about sugar…it’s doubled in price,” Hamit said, also lamenting the higher cost of grains and peanuts.
Tensions have risen over water use, which is traditionally sourced from communal wells. Some refugees at the Goungour refugee camp, south of Koufroun, told Reuters they had been barred by locals from drawing water in a nearby village and had to dig their own wells in dry riverbeds.
Hamit said she tried to help “even the refugees who have set up shelters nearby…they come to us for water”.
“The situation is tough for everyone.”
– MAHAMAT RAMADANE and ZOHRA BENSEMRA. Koufroun, Chad/Reuters
The truce was brokered and is being remotely monitored by Saudi Arabia and the United States, which say it has been violated by both sides but has still allowed for the delivery of aid to an estimated two million people.
“We hope this truce succeeds even if only to stop the war a little and that we can return to our normal lives. We have hope in the truce and we don’t have other options,” said Hind Saber, a 53-year-old resident of Khartoum.
Hours before the ceasefire extension was signed, residents reported intensive fighting in all three of the adjoining cities that make up Sudan’s greater capital around the confluence of the Nile – Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri.
Clashes resumed late on Tuesday on the outskirts of the cities.
In a statement the RSF accused the army of violating the ceasefire, saying that it defended itself against an attack and took over an army base.
The war has caused nearly 1.4 million people to flee their homes, including more than 350,000 that have crossed into neighbouring countries.
Areas of the capital have been hit by widespread looting and frequent cuts to power and water supplies. Most hospitals have been put out of service.
The United Nations, some aid agencies, embassies and parts of Sudan’s central government have moved operations to Port Sudan, in Sudan’s Red Sea state, the main shipping hub which has seen little unrest.
Port Sudan curfew
On Tuesday, the state’s security committee said it had caught several “rebellious” sleeper cells that it said had sneaked in from outside and warned that they were planning activities.
“We thank the citizens of Red Sea state for their total cooperation and for immediately reporting the presence of these rebellious elements and their agents within their neighbourhoods,” it said, without specifying their identity.
The committee later extended a state of emergency and declared a curfew from 11pm to 5am in Port Sudan.
The conflict erupted on 15th April over internationally backed plans for a transition to elections under a civilian government.
Leaders of the army and the RSF had held the top positions on Sudan’s ruling council since former leader Omar al-Bashir was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019.
They staged a coup in 2021 as they were due to hand leadership of the council to civilians, before falling out over the chain of command and restructuring of the RSF under the planned transition.
Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan appeared in a video on Tuesday greeting troops. He said that the army had agreed to the ceasefire extension to ease citizens’ access to services.
“The army hasn’t used its full deadly power, but it will be forced to do so if the enemy does not obey or listen to the voice of reason,” he said in a statement.
UN children’s agency UNICEF said more than 13.6 million children in Sudan, a country of 49 million people, were in urgent need of lifesaving humanitarian support.
The UN World Food Programme, which expects up to 2.5 million people in Sudan to slip into hunger in coming months, said that 17,000 metric tonnes of food had been looted since the conflict began.
WFP said on Monday that it had begun to distribute food in parts of the capital for the first time since the outbreak of fighting.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk warned on Tuesday that fighting in Khartoum, which has spread to the war-weary Darfur region, could take on an “inter-ethnic dimension which would be terrible”.
– Additional reporting by EMMA FARGE
