UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says Sudan is on the brink of “all-out civil war” as intense clashes between rival generals continue unabated
Release date – Monday 23 July 07:30
Cairo: UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Sudan was on the brink of “all-out civil war” as violent clashes between rival generals continued unabated in the capital Khartoum on Sunday.
The Secretary-General’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said he warned on Saturday night that a war between the Sudanese army and powerful paramilitary forces could destabilize the entire region.
Months of tension between military chief General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan and his counterpart, the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, General Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo, have plunged Sudan into chaos and Open fighting broke out in mid-April.
Health Minister Haytham Mohammad Ibrahim said in a televised address last month that more than 3,000 people had been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in the conflict. However, the death toll is likely to be much higher.
More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes for safer areas within Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to United Nations figures.
The battle comes 18 months after two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government.
Sudan’s hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy were dashed in April 2019 when a popular uprising forced the Sudanese army to overthrow longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir.
The war has turned the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas across the country into battlegrounds.
Residents of Khartoum said heavy fighting was raging south of the capital early Sunday.
Resident Abdalla al-Fatih said heavy weapons were used by the warring parties in the fighting near Karaka, with military aircraft circling the area.
In his statement, Guterres also condemned an air strike on Saturday that health authorities said killed at least 22 people in Omdurman. Omdurman is a city across the Nile River from the capital Khartoum. The attack was one of the deadliest in the conflict.
Doctors Without Borders blamed the military for the Omdurman attack. The military denied the allegation and said in a statement on Sunday that its air force did not carry out any air strikes on the city that day.
Haque said in a statement that the secretary-general also condemned the massive violence and loss of life in the western Darfur region, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the ongoing conflict.
“This behavior is dangerous and disturbing in its complete disregard for humanitarian and human rights law,” Guterres said.
U.N. officials say violence in the region has recently taken on an ethnic dimension, with Doctors Without Borders and Arab militias reportedly targeting non-Arab tribes in Darfur, a sprawling region of five provinces.
Last month, Darfur Governor Mini Arko Minawi said the region was returning to its genocidal past, referring to the conflict that engulfed the region in the early 2000s.
Entire towns and villages in West Darfur have been taken over by Doctors Without Borders and its allied militias, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee to neighboring Chad.
Activists reported that many residents were killed, women and girls raped, and property looted and burned.
Clashes broke out between the military and Forces Without Borders elsewhere in Sudan on Sunday, including North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces.
