Living in the Heart of Khartoum (South Africa): The War for a Family in a Building with a Soldier, a Mother and a Child
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A mother shot in the street while crouching to protect her child. A toddler is trapped in a building that has been hit. A whole family hiding under a bed, with children crying from the sound of constant gunfire and shelling.
They describe a city with no electricity, water or medicine, and they are terrified as the urban warfare goes on in their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, the clashes between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue on the streets of Khartoum despite the agreed upon 24-hour cease-fire that was started yesterday at 6 o’clock in the evening. We are still hearing the sounds of air fighters strikes and heavy equipment during the early morning hours of today. The situation remains guarded and it continues to be dire.
There is no certainty that families will be together again, she says. “A friend of mine was separated from her three-year-old daughter on Saturday and hasn’t been able to get to her since. She is not sure if she can get to her because the streets are unsafe. In addition, she found out just today that their apartment block, where her daughter is, has been hit. These are the kinds of desperate stories, which are very common in Khartoum.
The children are crying because they’re very scared and the house is shaking because of the war planes, and all our family stay under the bed.
Salih says that civilians are prisoners in their own homes because it is impossible for them to contact family members who they are separated from. One woman she knew had tried to move from one location to a safer place with her children — and was shot dead by the RSF.
“On Saturday morning, everyone was kind of caught unawares,” Khair says. “It’s the kind of warfare one might expect in a battlefield, but instead it’s taking place right in the heart of town. uncertainty is driving peoples’ fears and anxieties, and it’s hard for many people to know how long this will take.
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Duaa Tariq, an art curator, tells NPR she is trapped inside a house with her sister, who is five months pregnant, and two-year-old nephew. They are beginning to run out of food.
“Right now the fight has come to my neighborhood,” she says. There were three people that were killed two minutes from my house and we’re very frightened and scared in terms of supplies.
One of Sudan’s grassroots pro-democracy resistance committees is led by a 30-year-old man. She helped lead a peaceful revolution that brought down the president of North Africa who was indicted for war crimes. Since then she’s continued her activism, hoping to see a democratic Sudan.
The neighborhood committees went out and did graffiti on the street to remind people that their voice is here. We’re trying to make it through so we can hear you, but the bullets are always louder than people’s voices.
The secretary-general of the Sudanese American Physicians Association, Mohamed Eisa – also a gastroenterologist at Allegheny Health Network Medicine Institute in Pittsburgh – spoke to Morning Edition from Khartoum. Doctors and medical personnel have been unable to access the wounded since the latest failed attempt to impose a ceasefire.
“We continue our request for an immediate and safe passage for the wounded and healthcare personnel to the health care facilities.” Eisa told NPR’s A Martinez.
We need everything starting from just simple, normal saline, simple gauze, simple sutures all the way to the supplies that are used in the operating room for lobotomy, for extraction of gun wounds, chest tubes for those who sustain chest traumas, all kinds of supplies. We are in dire need for blood and the bags that are used for blood transfusion because those are in shortage as well. It’s a very urgent need for everything that we can get our hands on.
Thirty-nine of Khartoum’s 59 hospitals have been shut down by artillery fire and aerial bombing since a power struggle between rival military forces first erupted, according to the Sudanese American Physicians Association. Most of the remaining medical facilities were overwhelmed by the number of casualties.
Thousands of people have been displaced because of the fighting between the forces of Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leader, Hemedti. It endangers the transition to democracy that began with a popular uprising.
The two generals played a part in the fall of the Bashir regime. The military power-sharing plan that would have led to civilian oversight was shattered on Saturday by the urban warfare.
The primary health care centers here are historically based within the neighborhoods. So they are much safer. They are away from the main streets. It’s not hard for the medical personnel to access them because most of the time, the medical personnel live in the same neighborhood. That’s how it’s been historically in Sudan. This idea is taking a lot of attention because it would make it easier for people to get to the operating rooms if they were in a trauma center. If the ceasefire hasn’t been responded to, that is our plan B.
This is a war that only the innocents and the people of Sudan are the ones that are affected from it. They all appeal for an immediate cease-fire. They all appeal for an immediate attention to the medical part of this. They can see that a human rights crisis is occurring all the time in Sudan.