Aerial bombardment and non-stop firing in Khartoum, tens of thousands of people fleeing for safety: the Sudan is “collapsing”warns the Secretary-General of the United Nations, as the fighting in the north-east African country is now in its third week.

The country was plunged into chaos on April 15 when the power struggle between the head of the military junta, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the second-in-command of the military regime, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, or “Hameti”, head of the feared Rapid Support Forces (RSF), turned into a war.

The hostilities since then have killed at least 528 people and injured another 4,599, according to the latest official data from the Ministry of Health, released on Saturday.

This is an obviously underestimated count, as corpses lie on the roads, which are impassable, it is impossible to have an accurate count of the victims.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese, as well as foreigners, have fled to neighboring states, notably Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad and South Sudan, while foreign governments continue frantic efforts to hastily remove hundreds of their nationals.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres summed up the situation yesterday in an interview with Al Arabiya television, saying “the war for power continues while the country is collapsing.”

The rivals continue to accuse each other of violations of the internationally brokered ceasefire that theoretically lasts until midnight on Sunday (01:00 Monday Greek time).

Civilians are trying to escape or survive locked in their homes, without electricity, running water, food.

“There is fighting with heavy weapons and machine guns,” said a resident of Khartoum, the capital. Another citizen of Khartoum spoke of “explosions and fires” in districts.

About 70% of hospitals in war zones have been shut down, according to a Sudanese doctors’ union.

“Nightmare”

The day before Friday, the rival generals accused each other in parallel media interviews.

On Al-Hura television, General Burhan called the DTY “a paramilitary group that wants to destroy Sudan” with the help of “mercenaries who came from Chad, the Central African Republic and Niger.”

“Khameti”, for his part, described his opponent as a “traitor”, a person “unworthy of trust” in an interview with the BBC.

The two generals drove civilians out of the transitional government with them when they staged the October 2021 coup, which toppled former dictator Omar al-Bashir two years earlier. But their differences began to grow, and their disagreement over the terms of inclusion of paramilitaries into the regular forces erupted into open war on April 15.

For the UN’s special envoy to Sudan, German diplomat Volker Pertes, although tensions were palpable, there was “no indication” of what would happen in mid-April as, as he told Al Jazeera, the two generals were to meet to discuss that day.

Although the guns have not fallen silent since then, Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan – and, historically, a mediator in Sudan – yesterday Saturday called on the two rival generals to have a “face-to-face, constructive and solid dialogue”.

He also asked them to “not try to strengthen their positions”, as several observers said the truce was not kept because neither side wanted to give the other a chance to advance or gather reinforcements.

“God forbid if Sudan reaches the stage of real civil war (…) this will be a real nightmare for the world,” warned Sudan’s former interim prime minister, Abdullah Hamdok, yesterday Saturday from Nairobi.

According to the United Nations, 75,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, which is particularly fierce in Darfur, a region where war raged in the 2000s.

Although the supposed ceasefire did not stop the hostilities, it allowed civilian evacuation corridors to remain open. A convoy organized by US authorities was thus able to transport US nationals and others to Port Sudan. From there, another ship took about 1,900 people to Saudi Arabia, which has so far welcomed nearly 5,000 people, Saudis and foreigners.

Among them, Merdad Malekzad, one of the last Iranians to be rushed out of the country on Saturday, described the daily bombings and explosions in Khartoum. “I never imagined it would come to this.”

“Society is collapsing”

The British government announced on Saturday that it had evacuated almost 1,900 people from Sudan since Tuesday. Those eligible for emergency evacuation had until yesterday morning to arrive at an air base and board the last RAF flights.

“The window of opportunity is closing,” Canada’s government warned, noting that it “continues to consider various options,” land and sea routes.

The UN estimates that millions of Sudanese are also at risk of facing hunger, from which a third of the country’s citizens already suffer, one of the poorest on the planet.

Looting, destruction, arson are multiplying in Western Darfur, even in displaced persons camps, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières, MSF) complained. The NGO was forced to “stop almost all activities [της]».

In recent days, at least 100 people have been killed in fighting in the capital El Jenaina, according to the UN.

“Society is collapsing, we see tribes now trying to arm themselves,” said Antonio Guterres.