Sudan conflict: Worrying images from burgeoning civil war as generals clash in capital city of Khartoum

As civilians scramble to leave, the images show planes, helicopters and almost entire airports have been destroyed in the fighting.

They show at least four damaged helicopters at a helicopter base south of Khartoum — a city of more than 600,000 in the heart of the north African nation.

At Merowe Airbase, north of Khartoum, entire buildings were set on fire. Su-25 ground attack airplanes can be seen destroyed at El Obeid airbase as well. At least 14 airplanes at Khartoum International Airport have been destroyed in recent days, according to satellite imagery analysis from Maxar Technologies.

Everyday folk there are facing the terrifying possibility of another bloody civil war, as battles between the army and paramilitaries rage in the capital city of Khartoum.

Witnesses have reported bodies in the streets, and more than 330 civilians have been killed as of Friday, with no end in sight to the bloodshed. Thousands of residents have already fled from the capital, seeking safety from the ongoing violence.

“Life in Khartoum is impossible if this war does not stop,” said 33-year-old Alawya al-Tayeb via AFP as she escaped the city.

“I tried to make children not see the slain bodies on the streets,” she said.

The Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries said they would “fully commit to a complete ceasefire” from 4pm local time for 24 hours, as did the army.

But gunfire still continued into Wednesday night, according to witnesses on the ground. It was the second day in a row a proposed humanitarian ceasefire failed to take hold.

The Sudanese army said that 177 Egyptian soldiers who had been captured by the RSF in the northern city of Merowe were evacuated on Wednesday back to Egypt on four Egyptian military transport planes.

Other evacuation plans have been difficult to orchestrate, as foreign diplomats have been attacked and UN received reports of sexual violence against aid workers.

The violence erupted last Saturday between forces of the two generals who seized power in a 2021 coup. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the RSF are now in a brutal clash for supreme power.

It has followed a bitter dispute between them over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.

Battles have damaged residential and commercial buildings, and civilians sheltering in their homes are becoming increasingly desperate, with dwindling food supplies, power outages, and a lack of running water.

Hospitals are being shelled, and the official doctors’ union has reported “severe shortages” in remaining facilities.

“The toll has been high, with initial estimated civilian deaths of more than 270,” according to the embassies. The real figure is thought to be much more, with many wounded unable to reach hospitals which are themselves being shelled.

The US embassy in Khartoum said it started gathering citizens’ personal details but tweeted: “Due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, there are no plans for (a) US government-co-ordinated evacuation.”

The defence minister in Chad, which borders Sudan’s Darfur region, said around 320 Sudanese soldiers had fled over the border in fear of the RSF, which was created in 2013 by longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Military commanders toppled Bashir together in April 2019 following mass protests against his three decades of iron-fisted rule. In October 2021 Burhan and Daglo worked together in the coup against the civilian government installed following Bashir’s ouster, derailing an internationally backed transition.

According to analysts, the two clashing. generals were for years legitimised by an international community more focused on appeasement than on accountability.

“The international community has a lot to answer for here,” Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair told AFP, as deadly fighting raged in the country for nearly a week.

“It was their poorly thought out political process which really ratcheted up tensions,” said Khair, founder of the Confluence Advisory think tank.

Since the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, international mediators have sought to bring civilians and the military to the negotiating table.

But in the process, analysts believe, they gave too much credit to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo — commonly called Hemeti — who leads the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“There was a lot of handholding and appeasement of these generals throughout this political process, because the international community framed them as reformers,” Khair said.

Previously, negotiators and envoys spoke almost exclusively with the generals, “rarely engaging substantial proportions of the Sudanese public in the political process”, allowing the generals to ignore “accountability to the Sudanese people”.

It was this that “led the generals to believe that they could have an all-out conflict in the middle of Sudan’s capital”.

– with AFP