Sudan Faces ‘Full-Scale Civil War,’ UN Warns as 22 Die in Air Raid

Conflict-torn After an airstrike on a residential neighborhood on Sunday left almost two dozen people dead, the United Nations warned that Sudan was on the verge of a “full-scale civil war” that may destabilize the whole region.

In what it characterized as an airstrike on Omdurman, the sister city of Khartoum, on Saturday, the health ministry reported “22 dead and a large number of wounded among the civilians” in the neighborhood of Dar al-Salam, which is Arabic for “House of Peace”.

The air strike is the most recent event to spark criticism after almost three months of conflict between Sudan’s warring generals.

There have been around 3,000 fatalities in the fighting, a surge of sexual assaults have been claimed by survivors, and witnesses have described racially motivated murders. Widespread theft has taken place, and the UN has warned that there may have been crimes against humanity in the Darfur area.

After the airstrike, victims that seemed to have been dismembered were partially covered on the ground, according to a video shared on Facebook by the health ministry. Several of the casualties were female.

Fighting against the regular army, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said that 31 people were killed in the “air strikes.”

However, on Sunday, the armed forces issued a statement “clarifying that the air force did not deal with any hostile targets in Omdurman yesterday.” Residents reached by AFP also verified an air strike.

More airstrikes were reportedly carried out on Sunday near the presidential palaces in Khartoum and Omdurman, as well as machine gun battles and artillery fire in the southern part of the city, according to witnesses.

According to his deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced the air attack in Omdurman, which “reportedly killed at least 22 people” and injured several more.

According to Haq, Guterres “remains gravely concerned that the ongoing conflict between the armed forces has brought Sudan dangerously close to a full-scale civil war, potentially destabilizing the entire region.”

According to witnesses, locals started preparing graves for those killed in the air attack on Saturday.

Both in Khartoum and the western part of Darfur, which has seen some of the most brutal combat, several dead have been left to fester on the streets since the war started.

‘DANGEROUS AND DISTURBING’

According to the International Organization for Migration, the violence in Sudan has dislocated about three million people, nearly 700,000 of whom have fled to nearby nations.

The RSF and its allies have been held responsible for the majority of the numerous breaches, according to the United States, Norway, and Britain, although the UN and African blocs have warned of a “ethnic dimension” to the fighting in Darfur’s western area.

Fighting has also been reported in the state of South Kordofan, which is close to Ethiopia and has a history of instability, as well as Blue Nile state, which is concentrated in Darfur and the capital Khartoum.

Residents of El-Obeid, the administrative and economic center of North Kordofan, south of Khartoum, reported additional violence in the region on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Haq supported attempts by the African Union and the East African group IGAD to resolve Sudan’s conflict, saying that “there is an utter disregard for humanitarian and human rights law that is dangerous and disturbing.”

The heads of the IGAD nations managing the Sudan issue, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan, will meet in Addis Abeba on Monday.

Both RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo and Sudan’s army head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan have been invited, but neither has indicated that they would go.

Khalid Omer Yousif, who was dismissed from the administration in 2021 when Daglo and Burhan launched a coup, before their falling out, indicated that a number of Sudanese civilian personalities are already there “in order to accelerate peace efforts”.

A statement from the president’s office in Cairo claimed that Egypt, a key friend of Burhan’s, said it would hold a conference of Sudan’s neighbors on Thursday to discuss a resolution to the crisis and its “repercussions” on the region.

Throughout the conflict, several ceasefires have been declared and disregarded.