Artillery fire continues to rock Khartoum despite US sanctions against Sudan’s army and paramilitaries, with the two sides appearing poised to escalate their power struggle.

In the seven-week war between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, more than 1,800 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. displaced.

On Thursday, Washington announced sanctions against two companies that supply equipment to the military and two gold mining companies owned by Daglo and two of his brothers. According to a 2019 report, these two companies transferred millions of dollars to DTY and accounts in the United Arab Emirates.

Despite this, “the army is expected to launch a massive offensive soon, for this reason it has withdrawn” from the negotiations that were being held in Saudi Arabia to reach a truce, estimates researcher Holud Hare.

Dead in the market

Diplomatic isolation, diplomats and experts have been complaining for years, does not pose a real threat to the two opposing generals.

Daghlo is considered one of the richest men in Sudan — Africa’s third-largest gold producer — and can easily forge alliances, while al-Burhan, like all his military colleagues, has developed years of sanctions against him. Sudan strategies to bypass them.

Today “the military wants to achieve military gains to be in a better position in the event of a resumption of negotiations,” Hair assures.

Under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, the two sides pledged three weeks ago to “protect civilians” and then signed two cease-fires that were not kept.

On Wednesday the military pulled out of negotiations to establish safe corridors for civilians and humanitarian aid, and the following day the US and Saudi Arabia announced they were officially suspended.

Yesterday Friday the army said it was “surprised”, saying it had put forward a proposal for “informal” talks, which had been “ignored”.

The US has announced that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will travel to Saudi Arabia next week, without specifying whether Sudan will be on the agenda for his talks.

While the Sudanese army was withdrawing from the negotiations in Jeddah, it deployed heavy weapons in Khartoum. The cannons have continued to fire since then, killing at least 18 civilians in a market on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the DTY continue to set up headquarters in hospitals or homes of civilians.

The fighting is even fiercer in Darfur, a province bordering Chad.

Displaced persons who arrived there told Doctors Without Borders (MSF) that they saw “armed men shooting at people trying to flee on foot, looted villages and injured people suffering.”

UN mission

The situation risks worsening, especially for the displaced, with the arrival of the rainy season. Summer is typically the season of malaria, peak food insecurity and infant malnutrition.

“Living conditions, which were already extremely difficult in the makeshift camps, will worsen and the floods will complicate movements and aid delivery,” MSF warned.

Aid workers, who before the war provided aid to a third of Sudan’s 45 million people, may no longer be there.

Eighteen aid workers have been killed and no safe corridor has been established to allow aid to be delivered. Aid shipments arriving by air are stuck at customs and international staff are denied entry permits, while local workers are either exhausted or confined to their homes.

Three-quarters of the hospitals have ceased to function and those that are still receiving patients and wounded lack medical supplies and medicines.

In a brief statement unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council yesterday Friday, the UN Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (Unitams) was extended until December 3, 2023.

General al-Burhan last week called for the ouster of the head of the mission, German Volker Pertes, blaming him for the war. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “full confidence” in Pertes, as did many members of the Security Council.

Unitams was created in June 2020 to support Sudan’s democratic transition following the fall of Omar al-Bashir the previous year.