• Death toll in Sudan’s clashes climbs to 822
A report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council this week said that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias, currently fighting for control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), have seized residential buildings.
The move was aimed at using the buildings as operational bases for hostile manoeuvres, potentially harming civilians, it was learnt yesterday.
The death toll in the armed clashes between the Sudanese Army and the RSF has climbed to 822, the Sudanese Doctors Union said yesterday.
“The number of civilian deaths since the beginning of the clashes has climbed to 822 with 3,215 injuries,” the nongovernmental organisation said in a statement.
The casualty statistics cover the national capital Khartoum, the capital of North Kordofan State El-Obeid and the capital of West Darfur State Geneina, the union noted.
Many Sudanese citizens have taken to social media platforms to report that such RSF actions are now prevalent in Khartoum.
“I first thought that these reports were propaganda disseminated by army loyalists against the RSF. But they now seem to be true,” said Khaled Mahmoud, a journalist specialising in Sudanese affairs.
“I cannot decide whether the RSF actions are part of a strategy or the result of a fear of defeat, resulting in their spreading terror throughout the city,” he added.
The RSF were established by ousted former Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir in 2013. They are mainly comprised of Janjaweed militias accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict between 2003 and 2019.
The Janjaweed hail from Arab Bedouin tribes in Darfur and West Kordofan in Sudan. Al-Bashir used them to quell the demands of non-Arab groups in Darfur, such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa. He also directly affiliated them to himself and not to the armed forces.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is said to have acquired his nickname “Hemedti” from the Arabic words for “support” and “my protection.”
“I live in Buri [Downtown Khartoum], and my brother lives in Bahari [Khartoum North]. The two areas are connected via the Al-Mek Nemer Bridge,” Khartoum resident Amal Al-Rayyeh told Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone.
Buri is a middle-class district of the Sudanese capital and is close to the city centre. Its residents have been affected by the fighting between the SAF and the RSF to control the army general command.
Khartoum North is in the northeastern part of the capital and has a number of army and railway facilities, such as the Waburat neighourhood that controls transport to the north of the country and up to the Egyptian border.
“I called my brother last week to check up on him, but I couldn’t reach him. More than a day later, I was able to reach him, and he told me that the RSF had kicked him and his children out of their house to use it as a base,” Al-Rayyeh said.“He has managed to get to my house in Egypt. His neighbour fled to Egypt as soon as the Janjaweed seized my brother’s house,” she added.
Khartoum is one of the largest metropolises in Africa and the Arab world. The majority of its inhabitants reside in modest single or double-storey housing, with only a handful of apartments available in selected areas.