Khartoum—Sudan’s devastating war raged on into a third month Thursday as the reported death toll topped 2,000 and after a state governor was killed in the remote Darfur region.
Since April 15, the regular army headed by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been locked in fighting with paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
The fighting has driven 2.2 million people from their homes, including 528,000 who have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“In our worst expectations, we didn’t see this war dragging on for this long,” said Mohamad al-Hassan Othman, one of more than a million civilians who have fled heavy fighting in the capital Khartoum.
Everything in “our life has changed”, he told AFP. “We don’t know whether we’ll be back home or need to start a new life.”
The death toll has risen above 2,000, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project’s latest figures, which cover fighting until June 9.
In long-troubled West Darfur state, the violence claimed the life of Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar, hours after he made remarks critical of the paramilitaries in a telephone interview with a Saudi TV channel.
The United Nations said “compelling eyewitness accounts attribute this act to Arab militias and the RSF”, while the Darfur Lawyers Association condemned the act of “barbarism, brutality and cruelty”.
Burhan accused his paramilitary foes of the “treacherous attack”. The RSF denied responsibility and said it condemned Abakar’s “assassination in cold blood”.
Sudan analyst Kholood Khair of the Khartoum-based think tank Confluence Advisory said the “heinous assassination” was meant “to silence his highlighting of genocide… in Darfur”. AFP