United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned on Sunday that Sudan is on the brink of “all-out civil war” as clashes between rival generals in the capital Khartoum continue, according to the Associated Press (AP).
According to Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN secretary general, quoted by AP, António Guterres said that the war between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary force could destabilize the entire region.
In his remarks, António Guterres also condemned an airstrike on Saturday that authorities say killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, a city on the Nile river near Khartoum.
The UN secretary-general also lamented the large-scale violence and casualties in West Darfur, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the current conflict, according to the UN deputy spokesman.
“There is a complete disregard for humanitarian and human rights laws that is dangerous and disturbing,” said António Guterres.
UN officials have also said that violence in the region has recently reached an ethnic dimension, with paramilitary forces (Rapid Support Forces) and Arab militias attacking non-Arab tribes in the Darfur region, a sprawling region made up of five provinces.
In June, Darfur Governor Mini Arko Minawi said the region was reverting to the genocide of the past, referring to the conflict that raged in the region in the early 2000s, with entire villages and towns razed to the ground, forcing thousands of of people to flee to Chad.
Egypt said today that it will organize a meeting on Thursday with Sudan’s neighbors, with the aim of establishing “effective mechanisms” to achieve peace, according to a spokesman for the Egyptian presidency.
Sudan has descended into chaos after months of tension between Army General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and his rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which ended in clashes in mid-April.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in June that clashes had killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000, but the total death toll was expected to be much higher.
More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or have crossed the border into neighboring countries, according to UN figures.
The fighting began 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed transitional civilian government, dashing hopes for a peaceful shift to democracy after dictator Omar al-Bashir He was overthrown in April 2019.
Source: TSF
