CAIRO (AP) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sudan was on the brink of a “full-scale civil war” as violent clashes between rival generals continued unabated on Sunday in the capital, Khartoum.
He warned on Saturday evening that the war between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary force risks destabilizing the entire region, according to Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary general.
Sudan descended into chaos after months of tension between military leader General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and his rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary rapid support forces, erupted into open fighting in mid -april.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised comments last month that the clashes had killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others. The death toll, however, is very likely to be much higher. According to UN figures, more than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries.
The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed transitional civilian government. The conflict has dashed Sudanese hopes of a peaceful transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the military removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
The war has turned the capital Khartoum and other urban areas of the country into battlefields.
Residents of Khartoum said heavy fighting was underway early Sunday south of the capital. Warring factions were using heavy weapons during the fighting in the Kalaka neighborhood and army planes were seen hovering over the area, resident Abdalla al-Fatih said.
In his statement, Guterres also condemned an airstrike on Saturday which health authorities said killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, a town just across the river from the capital, Khartoum. The assault was one of the deadliest of the conflict.
The secretary-general also denounced the large-scale violence and casualties in the western Darfur region, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the ongoing conflict, Haq said in a statement.
“There is a total disregard for humanitarian law and human rights which is dangerous and worrying,” said António Guterres.
UN officials said violence in the region had recently taken on an ethnic dimension, with RSF and Arab militias targeting non-Arab tribes in Darfur, a sprawling region comprising five provinces. Last month, Darfur Governor Mini Arko Minawi said the region was reverting to its past genocide, referring to the conflict that engulfed the region in the early 2000s.
Entire towns and villages in West Darfur province have been overrun by the RSF and their allied militias, forcing tens of thousands to flee to neighboring Chad. Activists reported that scores of residents were killed, women and girls raped, and properties looted and burned.
Clashes took place on Sunday between the army and the RSF elsewhere in Sudan, notably in the provinces of North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.