(CNSNews.com) – The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday in response to the outbreak of fierce fighting in Sudan that has killed almost 100 people, including U.N. humanitarian workers, in Africa’s third-largest country.
Heavy shelling, gunfire, and airstrikes were reported in Khartoum and fighting also erupted in its neighboring sister city of Omdurman and other cities, including Merowe about 200 miles north of the capital, and Nyala, 600 miles to the southwest.
Claims and counterclaims by the two warring groups about key government installations, airports, and bases seized, lost, or retaken were difficult to corroborate, with sometimes contradictory reports in Sudanese media outlets. The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said early Monday that at least 97 civilians had been killed.
The violence, which threatens a recent agreement designed to move the country towards civilian government, is between Sudan’s armed forces (SAF), led by the country’s de facto leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful and controversial paramilitary group headed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Degalo.
Burhan and Degalo are both leading figures in a transitional military council set up after the military ousted Sudan’s Islamist strongman Omar Bashir in 2019. After another coup in October 2021 gave the military full power, the military and civilian groups in December last year signed a “framework agreement” aimed at putting the transition to civilian rule back on track.
The two sides have differed over a timetable and procedures for the RSF to be integrated into the national armed forces. It’s unclear how the open warfare now underway between them will affect that merger process, but Burhan’s SAF is calling for the “rebellious militia” to be dismantled.
U.S. Ambassador John Godfrey said on Twitter that he was “sheltering in place with the Embassy team, as Sudanese throughout Khartoum and elsewhere are doing.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement the department was in close touch with the embassy, “and have full accountability of our personnel.”
“We also have been communicating with American citizens who may be in the region about safety measures and other precautions.”
Members of the U.N. Security Council in a press statement urged the parties to “immediately cease hostilities,” restore calm, and return to dialogue. They also stressed the importance of maintaining humanitarian access and ensuring the safety of U.N. personnel.
According to the U.N., around 16 million people of Sudan’s 49 million people need humanitarian assistance.
World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain said she was “appalled and heartbroken” about the deaths of three employees, killed when SAF and RSF exchanged fire at a base in North Darfur state. Another two WFP staffers were injured in the same incident.
“Aid workers are neutral and should never be a target,” she said. “Threats to our teams make it impossible to operate safely and effectively in the country and carry out WFP’s critical work.”
An aircraft used by WFP to move aid and workers within the country was significantly damaged in a separate exchange of gunfire, at Khartoum international airport on Saturday.
McCain said the agency was temporarily halting its operations in Sudan, as it was unable to “do our lifesaving work if the safety and security of our teams and partners is not guaranteed.”
Calls for the two sides to stop fighting also came from the Arab League, African Union, European Union, and from countries ranging from the United States, Russia, and China to key Arab states with close ties to Sudan, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The RSF emerged from the notorious Janjaweed militia, an ally of the Bashir regime heavily involved in the fighting and atrocities that erupted in Darfur in 2003 and cost at least 300,000 lives.
RSF fighters were later involved in proxy wars in Yemen, fighting alongside Saudi and Emirati troops against Iran-backed Houthi rebels; and in Libya, supporting Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Tobruk-based Libyan National Army against the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli.