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The United Nations appealed Friday for Sudan’s battling factions to allow delivery of humanitarian relief to fend off looming “catastrophic” hunger.

Some five million Sudanese could face calamitous food insecurity in coming months as a nearly yearlong war between rival generals continues to tear the country apart, according to a UN document seen Friday by AFP.

The war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has since April last year killed tens of thousands, destroyed infrastructure and crippled the economy.

It has also triggered a dire humanitarian crisis and acute food shortages, with the country teetering on the brink of famine.

Noting that some 18 million Sudanese are already facing acute food insecurity — a record during harvest season — UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned in a letter to the Security Council that “almost 5 million people could slip into catastrophic food insecurity in some parts of the country in the coming months.”

He noted that nearly 730,000 Sudanese children — including more than 240,000 in Darfur — are thought to suffer from “severe” malnutrition.

“Aid organizations require safe, rapid, sustained and unimpeded access — including across conflict lines within Sudan,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“A massive mobilization of resources from the international community is also critical,” he added.

The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that the war risks “triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis.”

Jill Lawler, the emergency chief in Sudan for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said there were enough aid stocks in Port Sudan, but the problem was getting the aid from there to the people in need.

Lawler said she last week had led the first UN mission to reach Khartoum state since war erupted 11 months ago.

They had seen first-hand that “the scale and magnitude of needs for children across the country are simply staggering,” she told reporters in Geneva via video link from New York.

The war “is pushing the country towards a famine” with hunger “the number one concern people expressed.”

‘Moment of truth’

Mandeep O’Brien, UNICEF representative in Sudan, said 14 million children needed humanitarian aid and four million were displaced.

There was only a “small window left to prevent mass loss of children’s lives and future,” she warned on X, formerly Twitter.

World Health Organization regional director Hanan Balkhy, who recently returned from a trip to Sudan, underlined the acute needs in Darfur, saying most health facilities were looted, damaged or destroyed.

Griffiths, the UN aid chief, lamented that fighting continued to rage during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan despite a Security Council resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities.

“This is a moment of truth,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “The parties must silence the guns, protect civilians and ensure humanitarian access.”

The UN on Friday called for more financial support for aid operations in Sudan.

UN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters in Geneva that the world body had appealed for $2.7 billion to provide aid this year, but had received just five percent of that amount so far.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Flames gripped the Sudanese capital Sunday and paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters for the second day in a row, witnesses reported, as fighting raged into its six month.

“Clashes are now happening around the army headquarters with various types of weapons,” witnesses told AFP Sunday from Khartoum, while others reported fighting in the city of El-Obeid, 350 kilometres (about 220 miles) south.

Battles between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified Saturday, resulting in several key buildings in central Khartoum being set alight.

In social media posts verified by AFP, users shared footage of flames devouring landmarks of the Khartoum skyline, including the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower – a conical building with glass facades that had become an emblem of the city.

Users mourned Khartoum, a shell of its former self, in posts that showed buildings – their windows blown out and their walls charred or pockmarked with bullets – continuing to smoulder.

Since war erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, nearly 7,500 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

It has displaced more than five million people, including 2.8 million who have fled the relentless air strikes, artillery fire and street battles in Khartoum’s densely-populated neighbourhoods.

The millions that remain in the city woke up Sunday to find clouds of smoke obscuring the skyline, as the sound of bombs and gunfire burst through the capital.

“We can hear huge bangs,” witnesses told AFP Sunday from the Mayo district of southern Khartoum, where the army targeted RSF bases with artillery fire.

At least 51 people were killed last week in air strikes on a market in Mayo, according to the United Nations, in one of the deadliest single attacks of the war.

The worst of the violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, where ethnically-motivated attacks by the RSF and allied militias have triggered renewed investigations by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes.

There has also been fighting in the southern Kordofan region, where witnesses again reported on Sunday artillery fire exchanged between the army and the RSF in the city of El-Obeid.

Clashes around Khartoum’s military headquarters where Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had been holed up until last month.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan held talks on September 16 with Uganda’s veteran President Yoweri Museveni on his latest diplomatic foray abroad.

The Sudanese general was pictured meeting with Museveni at State House in the Ugandan town of Entebbe on what was described as a one-day working visit.

“They deliberated on bilateral and regional issues,” said a brief statement from the Ugandan presidency.

Sudan has been at war since April when fighting erupted between the regular army led by Mr. Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces commanded by his deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Clashes around Khartoum’s military headquarters — where Mr. Burhan had been holed up until last month — had seen a brief two-week respite before flaring again, with the RSF showering it with artillery fire, residents said Saturday.

Eyewitnesses on the ground told AFP they heard clashes in central Khartoum, with one resident saying the RSF “is firing heavy artillery” at army headquarters.

From his new base in the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan, Mr. Burhan has since late August made six trips abroad in what analysts say is a diplomatic push to burnish his credentials in the event of negotiations to end the conflict.

His first visit was to Egypt, followed by South Sudan, Qatar, Eritrea, Turkey and now Uganda.

At least 7,500 people have been killed since the conflict broke out on April 15, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

The war has uprooted more than five million people, including one million who fled across borders, according to United Nations figures.

Neither side has been able to gain the upper hand in the conflict, with the army controlling the skies and Daglo’s fighters embedding themselves in residential areas.

Witnesses have noted an increase in the intensity of air strikes, and consequently the civilian death toll, as the army seeks to regain control of parts of the capital.

Mr. Burhan has been Sudan’s de facto leader since the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019, when he was appointed head of the Sovereign Council of military and civilian figures tasked with steering the transition to a fully-fledged democracy.

With the headquarters of the ruling party burning in the back, supporters of Niger’s ruling junta celebrate in Niger after a successful coup.
| Photo Credit: Fatahoulaye Hassane Midou

On August 30, Gabon’s president Ali Bongo Ondimba was ousted after mutinous soldiers launched a coup against his government. This comes after a coup in Niger a couple months back.

African nations have seen 220 coup attempts since 1950. Globally, 490 coup attempts were made during this period. So, Africa accounts for 44.8% for all coup attempts.

Of all African countries, Sudan has seen the most coups since 1950. In this period, the country saw 17 coup attempts.

There is a decreasing trend in coups worldwide. Data collected by U.S. researchers Jonathan M Powell and Clayton L Thyne on coups from 1950 to July, 2023 July shows that from a high of 12.3 coups per year on average between 1960 and 69, the figure fell to 2.44 for the decade 2010 – 19.

However, Africa stands out. In the 1950s, most coups occurred in Latin America. On an average, 4.1 coups happened in this region per year in this decade. In Africa, the figure was at 0.5. In the 2010s, Latin America saw no coup attempts, while Africa saw 1.7 per year on average. This is still lower than the 1950s average, but the highest among other regions for the 2010s.

After 2020, we see an uptick in total coup attempts. Four years – 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 (till July) – saw 14 coup attempts in total. This is against the 22 total coup attempts recorded in the whole decade between 2010 to 2019. In 2021 alone, seven coup attempts were recorded, the most since 2012. Six of them were in Africa

Not always a success

As per Powell and Thyne’s definition, a successful coup is one where the chief executive in power remains unseated for at least a week after the coup. Of the 490 coups that Powell and Thyne have recorded, 244 coups succeeded and 246 failed. In Africa, an exactly equal number of coups have failed and succeeded — 110 each. Since the 1980s, the number of successful coups have been lesser than failed coups. The 2020-23 period is an exception, with nine successful coups and five failed ones.

Why do coups happen in the first place? Holger Albrecht from the University of Alabama and Ferdinand Eibl from King’s College, London have studied who starts military coups and what their incentives might be. They stated that measures like increased military spending might discourage top-ranking military officers from starting coups. In the case of combat-level officers, they noted that increased social spending that reflects on their individual welfare might be an effective coup-proofing measure.

Also read |Explained: The coups in West Africa and the regional response

Some researchers say that the pandemic may have had an effect on the economy of countries, exacerbating public dissatisfaction with the ruling governments. Islamist insurgencies in the region add fuel to the flames, leading to coups against governments that cannot or will not tackle terrorists.

Smoke rises above buildings after an aerial bombardment during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum, Sudan, on May 1, 2023. Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-April. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A drone attack Sunday (September 10) on an open market south of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, killed at least 40 people, activists and medical workers said, as the military and a powerful paramilitary group battle for control of the country.

At least three dozen others were injured in the attack in Khartoum’s May neighborhood, where paramilitary forces battling the military were heavily deployed, according to an activist group known as the Resistance Committees and two health care workers at the Bashair University Hospital, where the casualties were treated.

The activist group, which helps organise humanitarian assistance, posted footage on social media showing bodies wrapped in white sheets in an open yard at the hospital.

Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-April, when tensions between the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, burst into open fighting.

The RSF blamed the military’s air force for Sunday’s attack, though it was not immediately possibly to independently verify the claim. Indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes by both factions aren’t uncommon in Sudan’s war, which has reduced the Greater Khartoum area to a battleground.

The conflict has since spread to several parts of the country. In the Greater Khartoum area, which includes the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, RSF troops have commandeered civilian homes and turned them into operational bases. The military responded by bombing residential areas, rights groups and activists say.

In the western Darfur region — the scene of a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s — the conflict has morphed into ethnic violence, with the RSF and allied Arab militias attacking ethnic African groups, according to rights groups and the United Nations.

The conflict has killed more than 4,000 people, according to August figures from the United Nations. However, the real toll is almost certainly much higher, doctors and activists say.

The number of the internally displaced has nearly doubled since mid-April to reach at least 7.1 million people, according to the U.N. refugee agency. Another 1.1 million are refugees in neighboring countries.

Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan meets with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha, Qatar on September 7, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Amiri Diwan/Handout via Reuters

Sudan’s army chief travelled to Qatar on September 7 for talks with the country’s emir, making his third international trip since fighting broke out between the military and a rival paramilitary force in April, Sudanese state media said.

Sudan plunged into chaos almost five months ago when long-simmering tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, escalated into open warfare on April 15.

Burhan planned to hold talks with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in the Qatari capital, Doha, according to the state-run SUNA news agency.

In a video posted by the Sudanese army, Burhan was filmed leaving a plane in Doha and numerous Qatari officials greeting him on an airport tarmac. The army chief’s arrival was also confirmed by the state-run Qatar News Agency.

During their meeting, Burhan and Al Thani discussed the challenges facing conflict-stricken Sudan, The Emiri Diwan said in statement. Al Thani reiterated his call for broad peace negotiations between all of Sudan’s political forces and a lasting stop to the fighting, the statement said.

Acting Foreign Minister Ali al-Sadiq and Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim Mufadel, head of the General Intelligence Authority, accompanied Burhan on the trip, SUNA said.

The visit comes amid a flurry of similar diplomatic meetings convened in Egypt and South Sudan. Burhan held talks about the conflict with South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, on Monday in Juba.

Last week, the general met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt in the Egyptian coastal city of el-Alamein, Burhan’s first trip abroad since the conflict broke out. Few details were made public about either trip.

The conflict in the northeast African country is estimated to have killed at least 4,000 people, according to the U.N. human rights office. Activists and doctors on the ground say the toll is likely far higher.

The fighting has displaced more than 5 million people, according to the most recent figures produced by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.

Despite international efforts, the conflict has shown few signs of easing. Formal peace negations mediated by the United States and Saudi Arabia in the kingdom’s coastal town of Jeddah were adjourned in late June with both mediators publicly calling out the Rapid Support Forces and the army for continually violating agreed-to truces.

There have been at least nine cease-fires between the army and the RSF since the fighting broke out. All were violated.