Armed groups battle in Sudan for third day, civilian toll rises to 97

The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said Monday morning that stray artillery fire struck a hospital in the southern part of the capital, creating “a state of terror and panic,” but that patients and staff were unharmed. Residents of Khartoum told The Washington Post that gunfire and explosions continued sporadically through the night.

“We can’t sleep, I don’t know what’s happening, from what I read online it’s the same in all the districts,” said Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem. “From around 4:30 the jet planes were nonstop but it’s lessened now so it’s just gunfire and artillery … There’s whistling sounds like rockets are being launched but where exactly we don’t know. I can’t even poke my head out to look for smoke … We’ve filled empty containers with water but we’re moving into 36 hours with no electricity.”

Her young niece was refusing to eat and her mother was just praying, she said.

The fighting began Saturday morning after weeks of tension between the military — led by the president, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — and a heavily armed paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, led by Vice President Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known by his nickname Hemedti. The pair took control of the country in a 2021 coup, but disagreements over power-sharing and integrating the paramilitary group into the country’s armed forces led to a falling out.

Veterans of violence, Sudan’s weary doctors brave another crisis

Both sides had agreed to a three hour humanitarian pause starting 4 p.m. Sunday local time, but explosions and gunfire never stopped, residents said.

It’s still unclear what triggered the fighting on Saturday morning — both sides blame the other — but residents described the country as a tinderbox waiting for a spark after months of rising tensions between its two most powerful leaders. Both men had signed an internationally-backed draft deal in December meant to provide a road map to civilian leadership, but Sudanese activists say it elevated Hemedti into a direct threat to Burhan by making the two equals and not demanding that the RSF integrate into national forces.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined his British counterpart in demanding Sudan’s military leaders halt the fighting.

“People in Sudan want the military back to the barracks,” Blinken told reporters in the Japanese mountain resort town of Karuizawa where the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies are meeting.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said “the immediate future lies in the hands of the generals who are engaged in this fight, and we call upon them to put peace first.”

But Western nations have little leverage right now. Sudan has been largely isolated since Hemedti and Burhan seized power in a coup in 2021 that ended a short-lived civilian government. The debt-laden Horn of Africa nation desperately needs tens of billions of dollars to shore up its moribund economy, but lending deals are unlikely as long as the two men remain in power and fighting each other. Sudan’s economy tanked after the oil-rich south gained independence in 2011 and hyperinflation fed frequent street protests.

Neither Hemedti nor Burhan have given any indication that they want to negotiate, with Hemedti threatening to put Burhan on trial or see him “die like a dog.” Hemedti enjoys close relations with Moscow, whereas Burhan is backed by neighboring Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Photos shared by satellite imagery company Maxar showed smoke rising Sunday morning from planes at the airport, and more smoke coming from the Khartoum railway authority, the Energy Ministry, the Defense Ministry, the general command of the Sudanese army and Kober Bridge across the Nile River.

The U.N. World Food Program said on Sunday it was temporarily halting its operations in Sudan — where 15 million people, a one-third of the population, don’t have enough to eat — after three of its Sudanese staffers were killed in Darfur. Cindy McCain, the executive director of WFP, said in a statement that the threats to its teams there had made it “impossible to operate safely and effectively in the country.”

Miriam Berger contributed to this report.