Beirut, Lebanon – On December 9, a military attack hit a gas station in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, killing at least 28 people and injuring dozens.
The army said it was targeting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a military group it has been fighting since April 2023.
Speaking a few weeks after the incident, Mohamed Kandasha, a doctor in the area, remembers treating people with severe burns at a nearby hospital.
There were men, women and children among them, which is a sign of the indiscriminate attacks by both sides in the Sudanese war.
“The RSF does not care about the civilians as well as the soldiers,” he told Al Jazeera.
Increasing violence
More than 26,000 people were killed from April 2023 to June 2024 in Khartoum province alone as thousands died of conflict-related problems such as disease and starvation, according to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Since the military announced a major offensive to retake Khartoum from the RSF on September 25, the humanitarian crisis has worsened.
The latest war has resulted in extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate strikes that have killed dozens of people and increased risk for local aid workers.
The army and the RSF are former partners who collaborated to destroy the democratic transition after their former boss, President Omar al-Bashir, was toppled by popular protests in April 2019.
Four years later, the RSF and the army turned against each other in a bid for supremacy. After the first year of fighting, the RSF captured most of Khartoum and emerged as the dominant force in the conflict.
Then in early October, the army recaptured strategic neighborhoods and three bridges in the national capital region, which includes three cities, Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman.
As the war continues, the number of casualties seems to be increasing, said Mohammad Osman, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Sudan.
“Since October, there has been a major outbreak of violence,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I think we are seeing a lot of barrel bombs being used in Khartoum as well as drones, rockets and land rockets,” Osman added.
Barrel bombs are unreserved bombs filled with explosives and shrapnel and dropped indiscriminately on helicopters and airplanes.
Throughout the war, rights groups and United Nations experts have accused both sides of abuses such as the killing of prisoners of war, summary executions and torture of detainees.
The RSF has been accused of cleansing communities in the western Darfur region and gang-raping women and girls, according to Human Rights Watch, Al Jazeera reports and local monitors.
A major violation
After the army captured Khartoum’s Halfaya neighborhood in early October, many residents rejoiced at the end of a year and a half of RSF torture and brutality.
However, reports soon emerged that a number of men suspected of having ties to the RSF had been killed after the army advanced.
“This is beyond shameful and violates all norms and standards of human rights,” said Radhouane Nouicer, UN expert on Sudan, in a statement.
“This incident happened while people were still celebrating that the army liberated them,” said Mokhtar Atif, spokesperson for the Emergency Response Room (ERR), a local organization that helps residents.
“The soldiers killed these people … because they thought they were collaborating with the RSF,” he told Al Jazeera in France, where he is based.
The spokesman of the Sudanese army, Nabil Abdullah, denied that they were responsible for the incident and said that the soldiers never hit civilians, adding that sometimes RSF fighters pretend to be civilians when they are injured by airstrikes.
“We do not break the law for people. Soldiers [RSF] they are the ones targeting the citizens by killing them, evicting them, robbing them and confiscating their property,” Abdullah told Al Jazeera.
On December 10, the allied governor of Khartoum said that the RSF killed 65 people in Omdurman.
Witnesses condemned the attack as an act of “terror”.
“Whenever the army advances on the RSF, the paramilitaries respond by killing civilians,” said Badawi, a local aid worker who declined to give his last name because of the sensitivity of speaking to reporters in the war zone.
Al Jazeera emailed questions to the RSF press office asking it to respond to reports that the RSF has deliberately targeted civilians. The press office had not responded at press time.
You are vulnerable and frustrated
Human rights monitors, NGOs and analysts all accuse the military of preventing aid organizations from carrying out humanitarian operations in areas controlled by the RSF.
They also accuse the RSF of causing the famine by looting aid and food markets, raiding farms to destroy crops, and levying taxes and blocking aid convoys.
“Both the SAF and the RSF, as well as their foreign supporters, are responsible for the deliberate use of starvation, which constitutes crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law,” a UN panel of experts on Sudan said in October.
Residents in RSF areas rely almost entirely on ERRs, a network of humanitarian aid groups that have led the aid response since the war began, local and foreign aid workers told Al Jazeera.
On Thursday, ERRs in collaboration with the World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF finally delivered 28 trucks of life-saving aid.
It was the first time that WFP brought aid to RSF areas in Khartoum from military-held areas, said Hajooj Kuka, spokesperson for ERR in Khartoum.
But both sides are still targeting aid workers.
Residents of Khartoum North are in great danger as the area has become a center of conflict, said Atif, ERR spokesperson.
He told Al Jazeera that of the 69 local aid workers killed in the fighting by the army and the RSF, at least 30 were from Khartoum North.
In addition, aid workers are struggling to evacuate civilians from Khartoum North after the RSF commander ordered many neighborhoods – and thousands of people – to leave this month, Atif said.
The roads leading out of Khartoum North are dangerous due to military attacks and the presence of RSF fighters, which rights groups accuse of indiscriminate robbery and killing and rape of women and girls everywhere.
“There is random military fire on the roads, and the presence of the RSF … means anything can happen to us,” said an aid worker in Khartoum North whose name Al Jazeera is not publishing to protect the person.
Getting out safely?
The only safe road from Khartoum North is to Sharq el-Nile (East Nile), where aid workers are already overwhelmed by absorbing thousands of people fleeing the Gezira district, where the RSF has been killing almost every day since it took over for a year. past, local activists and witnesses.
ERR managed to evacuate about 200 people from Khartoum North to Sharq el-Nile due to lack of resources, said Atif, urging NGOs or UN agencies to support Khartoum North ERR by intervening to protect civilians.
Evacuating people without the military’s permission can be dangerous and lead to restrictions on aid groups, Osman said.
Last year, the army agreed to attack an aid team of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was to rescue about 100 people from the chaos in Khartoum, according to the Sudan Tribune.
This attack killed two aid workers and injured seven others.
In Sharq el-Nile, RSF arrested many ERR volunteers for no apparent reason, Atif said.
He thought that some RSF fighters wanted to collect a quick ransom and threatened the ERR.
“These are just people who help their communities. There is no reason for them to be in danger,” Atif told Al Jazeera.
“The opposite should happen. They must be given access, money and permits [to do their work].”
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