UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Sudan was on the verge of a “full-scale civil war” as fierce clashes between rival generals continued unabated in the capital Khartoum on Sunday.
He warned late Saturday that the war between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary force is likely to destabilize the entire region, according to Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary-general.
Sudan descended into chaos after months of tension between the military chief, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and his rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which erupted into open fighting in mid- April.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised remarks last month that the clashes have killed more than 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000. However, the death count is very likely to be much higher. More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or have crossed into neighboring countries, according to UN figures.
The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government. The conflict dashed Sudanese hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy after a popular uprising forced the military ouster of autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
The war has turned the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas of the country into battlefields.
Khartoum residents said heavy fighting was underway early Sunday south of the capital. Warring factions were using heavy weapons in battles in the Kalaka neighborhood and military jets were seen flying over the area, resident Abdalla al-Fatih said.
In his statement, Guterres also condemned an airstrike on Saturday that health authorities say killed at least 22 people in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from the capital Khartoum. The assault was one of the deadliest of the conflict.
The secretary-general also condemned the large-scale violence and casualties in the western Darfur region, which has experienced some of the worst fighting in the current conflict, Haq said in a statement.
“There is a complete disregard for human rights and humanitarian law that is dangerous and disturbing,” Guterres said.
UN officials have said that violence in the region has recently taken on an ethnic dimension, with RSF and Arab militias reportedly attacking non-Arab tribes in Darfur, a sprawling region consisting of five provinces. Last month, Darfur Governor Mini Arko Minawi said the region was regressing to its past genocide, referring to the conflict that raged in the region in the early 2000s.
Entire towns and villages in West Darfur province were overrun by the RSF and their allied militias, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee to neighboring Chad. Activists have reported many residents being killed, women and girls raped, and property looted and burned to the ground.
There were clashes between the army and the RSF in other parts of Sudan on Sunday, including North Kordofan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces.
