Cairo, Egypt
Reuters
As Sudan collapsed into fighting last week that has trapped civilians in their city neighbourhoods, cutting off access to water, food and healthcare, community groups, websites and apps have sprung up to mobilise medical help and find basic supplies.
The violent power struggle between the heads of the army and a big paramilitary force, who previously governed together, has killed hundreds of civilians and plunged Sudan into a humanitarian catastrophe, bringing war to the capital Khartoum, which is unused to such violence.
People look for water during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum North, Sudan, on 22nd April, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/File photo.
A JOURNEY ACROSS SUDAN’S CAPITAL KHARTOUM, A CITY TRANSFORMED BY WAR
In the Sudanese capital, charred paramilitary pick-up trucks hit by air strikes litter main streets and weary residents queue for bread in neighbourhoods largely emptied of civilian life.
On the outskirts, people lug suitcases long distances by foot towards bus stops as they try to flee the city.
A Reuters reporter returning to his family home on Sunday got a glimpse of a city enveloped by war over the past eight days – a journey that would normally take little more than 30 minutes but took three hours amid the chaos of the conflict.
The clashes pit Sudan’s army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. They jointly staged a coup in 2021 but came to blows over plans for an internationally-backed transition to civilian rule. It is the first time fighting on this scale has affected the capital, which is composed of Khartoum and the adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman and has a total population of more than 10 million at a confluence of the Nile.
Air strikes, shelling and gun battles have ripped across the city day and night, unabated through the final days of Ramadan when Muslims fast from dawn till dusk, and through the three-day holiday of Eid el-Fitr which ends on Sunday, despite repeated promises of ceasefires.
The RSF has embedded itself in several neighbourhoods, taking over buildings, while the army has used air strikes and heavy artillery to try to force its rivals back, according to residents and witnesses contacted by Reuters. The army has said it is trying to clear “hotbeds of rebel groups” from the capital.
The violence has cut water and power to much of the city, and damaged and closed hospitals. Many civilians are trapped in their homes or stranded, risking theft and looting if they venture out.
The reporter crossed the Blue Nile to Bahri, scene of heavy clashes over the past two days, before circling west and crossing the river to Omdurman in order to reach his family home from Khartoum, where he had been staying with relatives.
He navigated through a city transformed by the military power struggle.
He saw heavy deployments of RSF fighters in the areas he drove through in the three sister cities, some manning checkpoints where they demanded identity documents from drivers.
Army troops, who according to residents and witnesses began engaging in heavier ground fighting for the first time on Friday, could be seen at the entrance to Omdurman, where tanks, pickup trucks and soldiers with automatic rifles were deployed.
After more than a week of warfare, the reporter found residential streets largely deserted. In addition, petrol has become hard to obtain, and there were few cars. Supplies of flour and other staples are dwindling, and vegetables are scarce and expensive.
At the main market in Bahri, many buildings were badly damaged and burned by fighting and air strikes.
In some areas further from central Khartoum, buses could be seen preparing to carry people north towards Egypt, part of an exodus that has gathered pace over the past week.
People carrying small bags tried to hitch rides with passing cars or catch minibuses heading out of the city.
Near the Halfiya bridge linking Bahri to Omdurman, a long diplomatic convoy with armed guards and flying British flags could be seen heading west, one of the evacuations of embassy staff and foreign citizens that began on Saturday and gathered pace on Sunday as the fighting abated slightly.
– KHALID ABDELAZIZ, Khartoum, Sudan/Reuters
One existing group, a protest committee that had organised demonstrations against the ruling military council, has transformed into a kind of grassroots health service. Elsewhere, individuals have used technology to match local stocks of food, fresh water and medicine to neighbourhoods in need.
“Once war started, that same evening we got together to start figuring out how to volunteer,” said Azza Surketty, part of the Maamoura Resistance Committee which formed during a mass uprising in 2019 and helped organise relief in the Maamoura district of the capital during the COVID pandemic and mass floods.
It mobilised a team of surgeons and other medics, reopened a local health centre for urgent cases and set up a hotline for less urgent ones. It has handled at least 25 medical cases since the fighting began, Surketty said.
“Doctors help us treat a lot of cases including gunshots. But it gets difficult when we have a lot of bleeding, which needs a hospital,” she said, adding that two patients had died for lack of adequate supplies.
From his home in central Saudi Arabia, web developer Freed Adel, 30, has turned his personal website into a platform where people can either request or offer assistance based on their location.
“People started sharing what they need on social media networks and there are others who have available supplies that they share too. I had this idea to group all these cases in one place,” he said.
His site has mostly helped people in Khartoum, where much of the fiercest fighting has taken place.
“Most of the needs are medical due to the lack of hospital services, medical staff and the fact that people cannot reach hospitals,” Adel said.
Volunteers
Elsewhere in Khartoum, 25 year-old doctor Makram Waleed has built a 1,200-strong WhatsApp community split into groups for the capital’s different districts for people to share information about supplies of basics.
“Whenever I look at a certain area, I find people are actually communicating and we managed to get some people medicine and food,” Waleed said.
The biggest requirement for most people was drinking water, he said, but there were also a lot of requests for medicines, particularly for diabetes and blood pressure.
“We don’t have money or financial aid. We’re just trying to ease communication between people,” said.
With most of Khartoum’s hospitals shut down, and the few still open offering only limited services, medical needs have been intense.
Doctorbase, a health app run by Ahmed Mujtaba that previously had a network of 30 doctors, has switched from helping Sudanese deal with the existing problems linked to poverty to aiding with those impacted by violence.
Dozens of doctors from around the world have signed up since the fighting erupted on 15th April to volunteer time to advise Sudanese in urgent need of medical help using the app, said Mujtaba, who lives in Canada.
“Unfortunately the last two days we’ve seen a couple of cases that were urgent. They’re not meant to be treated using Telehealth, they actually need to go to a hospital,” Mujtaba said.
