The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said the total number of injured had reached 595, including dozens in critical condition.
Fighting broke out Saturday morning in the Horn of Africa nation after weeks of rising tensions between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a major paramilitary group led by Vice President Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — universally referred to as Hemedti — and the military, headed by the president, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Residents reported airstrikes in the capital, and three planes at the main airport were either set aflame or hit by gunfire. One had passengers and crew aboard.
Hemedti has close ties with Russia, while Burhan is backed by neighboring Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation. Instability in Sudan has also frequently bled over into its fragile neighbors. Chad has already announced it has closed the shared border between the two nations.
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and the three diplomats “agreed it was essential for the parties to immediately end hostilities without precondition.”
“I urge General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Degalo to take active measures to reduce tensions,” said Blinken in a statement. The only way forward for the warring parties, Blinken said, was to “return to negotiations that support the Sudanese people’s democratic aspirations.”
All U.S. Embassy personnel are accounted for, he added.
Sudan was already diplomatically isolated before the latest violence. Hemedti and Burhan seized power in 2021 in a coup that deposed the nation’s short-lived civilian government. Before that, Sudan had been ruled for 30 years by Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Its economy has been battered by hyperinflation and weighed down by massive foreign debt. A draft deal that Hemedti and Burhan agreed to in December with the biggest pro-democracy protest group was supposed to outline a timeline for the RSF’s integration into security forces and the nation’s transition to civilian rule.
But many Sudanese have said the deal was fundamentally flawed because a long timeline for integration strengthened the RSF’s hand and the deal elevated Hemedti to Burhan’s equal.
“The political process framed the generals as reformists and asked us all to believe it. You can draw a straight line between that framing and the generals’ hubris around being defenders of #Sudan and democracy as they plan on leveling #Khartoum (at least) to vanquish one another,” tweeted Kholood Khair, founding director of the Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory.
Fighting also erupted on Saturday in several other cities in Sudan, including Merowe, El Obeid and the towns of Al Fashir and Nyala in Darfur.
A resident of Omdurman, the twin city on the other side of the Nile to Khartoum, said his family had not slept all night because of the sounds of battle.
The RSF force originally grew out of the Janjaweed, a pro-government militia accused of major rights abuses in Darfur, including rapes, village burnings and mass killings.
Mohamed Osman, the Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post that the fighting had also spread to the eastern regions Kassala and Gadarif, bordering Eritrea and Ethiopia. The region saw an influx of refugees two years ago after civil war broke out in northern Ethiopia, but fighting was mostly focused around RSF camps, he said.
“I’m hearing a lot of artillery shells, mortars,” he said. “The whole issue across the country is that all military forces do have their bases in some sort of proximity to civilian areas.”
Hudson reported from the secretary of state’s airplane.
Katharine Houreld
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