Turkish evacuation plane shot at as latest cease-fire flounders in Sudan
Millions have been left stranded after fighting erupted between the military and the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) on April 15. On Thursday night, a fifth cease-fire was announced, intended to last for three days, but like the others it was immediately violated by fighting in the capital and elsewhere even as world leaders welcomed the warring parties’ “readiness to engage in dialogue towards establishing a more durable cessation of hostilities and ensuring unimpeded humanitarian access.”
The cease-fires, while never total, have occasionally resulted in reduced violence in some parts of the capital, allowing locals to flee and some evacuation flights for foreigners.
Those flights, out of an airfield just north of Khartoum, could be in danger after Turkey announced early Friday that “light weapons were fired on our C-130 evacuation plane, which was going to Wadi Sayidna for the mission of evacuating our citizens who were stuck in Sudan, where the clashes continued.” There were no injuries to Turkish personnel and the plane landed “safely,” the message said, without specifying when the attack occurred. Images posted online showed at least one bullet hole in the craft.
The army and RSF blamed each other for the attack. The airfield is secured by foreign troops and has been used to evacuate citizens from more than 41 nations so far, including France, Germany, Britain and a handful of Americans.
But many are still trapped, including one American family with two young girls, who reported shooting on their street in Khartoum on Friday morning that peppered the lower walls of their home with bullets. They have been trying to find a driver for more than six days to take them to safety but prices are sky high, petrol is scarce and drivers are afraid to enter neighborhoods where fighting is ongoing.
Muawiya Jaden, 29, said there had been fighting in southern Khartoum since 7:30 a.m. He lives just under a mile from the army air defense command, he said.
“I am now talking to you from under the bed,” he said by phone. “There is no water and we have not eaten any food since yesterday due to these clashes.”
Muhammad Abdul Rahman Abdullah, 24, said planes were bombing RSF positions near Jabal Awlia Hospital. “There is heavy deployment of the Rapid Support Forces infantry inside the neighborhoods after the battles intensified,” he said. “This area is densely populated.”
Conditions at the borders are also dire as thousands of people wait days in the desert, trying to flee through undermanned border crossings into Egypt or cram onto boats sent by Saudi Arabia to Jiddah. At least two people have died at the Egypt border crossing of Argeen and others have had to have intravenous fluids or CPR administered, witnesses have said.
In the vast arid western region of Darfur, the scene of savage civil conflict in the past, a truce has largely held until recently. The city of Geneina, which was spared the initial violence, has seen fierce fighting this week
In an echo of the ethnic strife that plagued the region two decades ago and brought on accusations of genocide, a witness told The Washington Post that the sudden outbreak in fighting has been mainly between the ethnically African Masalit groups and Arab militant groups.
The specter of renewed violence looms large over Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed during a 20-year civil war that pitted Arab militant groups, known as the Janjaweed, against ethnically sub-Saharan African rebels.
The militant groups attacked the city from four directions on Thursday morning, said the witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. “They came with motorbikes and they have some other vehicles,” he said. Eventually, a former rebel group known as the Sudanese Alliance, which signed the 2020 peace agreement that ended the war, repelled the attackers. The witness said 119 people had been killed in the fighting, adding to the 96 killed in the previous days. Markets and many homes and businesses had been looted, he said.
The dead were being collected in one place so people could try to identify them, he said, adding that many displaced families had been killed, including women and children. The militant groups also burned down government offices.
“They are still picking up the bodies,” he said. “We have a small clinic in our area and they are listing the names of the victims and those who are injured.”
On Friday, the Sudanese Alliance were patrolling the streets in armored vehicles.
“Janjaweed militias are targeting any Black person,” he said. “I fear this conflict in West Darfur will be a civil war.”
In the northern Darfur town of El Fasher, meanwhile, French troops came across the border from Chad after sunset and evacuated aid workers from the airfield, confirmed one evacuee.
“With very close coordination and cooperation between the two fighting parties and the government of North Darfur, we managed to facilitate the evacuation of 113 humanitarian workers from different U.N. agencies and international nongovernmental organizations from El Fasher to Chad,” North Darfur’s governor, Major General Nimir Abdulrahman, told The Washington Post in a text message.
Kareem Fahim in Istanbul contributed to this report.
