NAIROBI — Shelling and gunfire in the capital shattered a fourth attempted cease-fire in Sudan, residents said on Tuesday, although some neighborhoods were quiet enough in the early morning for families to scurry through the bombed-out streets seeking safety.
Amid the constant failed efforts to stem the fighting, Sudanese and others attempted to flee the country. Frantic families crossing into Egypt faced long queues on sweltering buses with little food or water.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that large-scale evacuations of U.K. citizens had begun on air force flights with a focus on the most vulnerable. The flights are departing from an airfield just north of the capital and will continue as long as conditions permit.
Millions of people were trapped on the front lines when fighting exploded in multiple cities in Sudan 11 days ago between the army and a heavily armed paramilitary force. The latest attempt at a cease-fire — the fourth — was announced by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken late Monday night. None of the other cease-fires have held in the capital, although the western region of Darfur has negotiated a temporary pause in fighting in most places.
The conflict pits Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army chief and de facto head of state, against Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known by his nickname, Hemedti — who heads the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. The fighting erupted as they were due to finalize a deal on power-sharing and incorporating the RSF into the military. Diplomats had hoped it might chart a path back to civilian rule after Hemedti and Burhan seized power in a 2021 coup.
Residents said after a comparatively quiet morning, clashes involving heavy artillery began again around 11 a.m. with errant shells tearing up houses and in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, a mosque was struck as well. The RSF said in a statement on its Facebook page that its forces near the presidential palace were under attack by the army, which did not respond to calls.
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Khartoum high school teacher Shaheen al-Sharif said the neighborhood of al-Firdous was relatively quiet in the morning before the family caught a bus going north Tuesday. The day before, he witnessed RSF fighters shooting homeless children as he sat at a tea shop, he said.
“I saw one drag a kid by his collar and toss him on the pavement. … He pulled out a rifle and shot like crazy,” he told The Washington Post. “Another kid yelled and moved, and he shot at him, as well. After the second shooting, I started running, and I could see them shooting at another kid.”
That child died, he said, and the other two were shot in the legs. Drawing on his days as a pro-democracy activist, he tried to staunch the blood with a shirt. “I’ve never seen someone just shoot kids like this,” he said. “But this is what we expect in the future. There’s a lot of weapons and ammunition being taken, and we have almost 20,000 prison inmates released.”
Some of Sudan’s biggest jails have released their prisoners because they cannot feed them or shells have slammed into prisons. Sharif said one of his neighbors who worked in a car repair shop had two inmates turn up on Monday evening asking for their shackles to be cut off. Terrified, he complied. Death row prisoners are usually shackled, he said.
“The next phase is going to be irrational, absurd violence. I don’t think this will be livable for anyone,” he said sadly.
Most of the country’s hospitals have collapsed, hit by either heavy weapons or having run out of blood, supplies, staff, water or power. At least 11 doctors have been killed and six ambulances attacked. Warehouses storing food and medicine have been looted.
Tagreed Abdin, an architect, said there had been some shelling and gunfire in her neighborhood around 9 a.m., but it quieted later. A neighbor was killed by shelling a couple of days ago, she said, but the family were staying.
“The roads aren’t safe. Even when there are proclaimed cease-fires, some people are attacked,” she said. Her three boys — 13, 15 and 16 — were just about coping, she said, but the family couldn’t cross the border into Egypt because visa requirements for men of military age meant her eldest son and husband could not enter. Her mother also uses a wheelchair and does not have a valid passport, she added.
“Roaming gangs are looting,” she said. “If there’s really a cease-fire, we can take our car, but right now, the buses are safer as they move in convoys, and it’s open season on private vehicles.”
In the Darfur town of El Geneina, the only one in the region where fighting is still taking place, residents had broken open a police armory the night before and taken guns. There was widespread shooting on Tuesday, said 25-year-old Tayseer Abdalla, and the military and RSF had been fighting on Monday. Now it was unclear who is responsible, he said.
“The army is in its headquarters in the east of the city, while the Rapid Support Forces are inside the neighborhoods,” he said. “There’s a state of lawlessness now and looting everywhere.”
Monday was also marked by major airstrikes in residential neighborhoods that incinerated homes as people fled. One man posted a video of Shambat, in northern Khartoum, showing men in white robes and women in butterfly-bright shawls pick their way across blasted buildings whose twisted roofs had been blown off the blackened shells.
Many families are trying to reach Egypt but the situation at the border is horrifying, said Dalia El Roubi, the former head of media for the civilian prime minister. Lines of up to 80 buses packed with traumatized families had to wait at the border in 100 degree heat (40C) for 12 hours before they could cross — followed by another seven hour wait in between the two border posts, she said.
One woman was taken off a bus so dehydrated she needed intravenous fluids immediately, and another seemed to be dying — her fellow passengers performed CPR on her. Finally a stretcher was found, but the Egyptian Red Crescent had no medical supplies on-site, not even acetaminophen, and there were no international aid agencies present, she said.
“We can do better than this,” she said, exhaustion lacing her voice. “It’s a disaster for mothers. The evacuations are a joke.” But, she noted, with bus tickets that used to be $24 now hitting $500 per person, those stuck in the baking queues were the lucky ones.