People in Khartoum are living in fear as fighting rages

War between Sudan and the RSF on Sunday morning: a desperate situation in the heart of Johannesburg, South Africa – the children’s voices are heard

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A mother shot in the street while crouching to protect her child. A toddler trapped in a building that’s been shelled, separated from her mother. A whole family hiding under a bed, with children crying from the sound of constant gunfire and shelling.

They describe a dire situation in the city, without water or medicine, as they cower amidst the urban warfare going on in their neighborhoods.

On Saturday, there was violence between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces. The two are vying for power, despite promises that a civilian government would be installed after an October 2021 coup d’etat by the Sudanese military.

“On Saturday morning, April 15, we woke up to the sounds of gunfire, from that morning on we live in fear,” says Hipa Salih, a Sudanese journalist. “I think we can die at any time. Nobody can feel safe in Khartoum now.”

” The children are crying because they’re very scared and the house is shaking, all our family stayed under the bed, the war planes over us.”

It’s impossible for civilians to reach family members from whom they are separated, Salih says, so people are effectively prisoners in their own homes. 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. And the problem is for a lot of people that no one is really sure how long this is going to take — and that uncertainty is driving people’s anxieties and fears.”

The Sudanese Public Radio Broadcasting Radio Network (NPR) Educators’ Call for Action in the 21st Century after the Sudan Power War

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.

There has been a fight in her neighborhood. Three people were killed two minutes away from my house by anti-aircraft, we’re very frightened and scared and we’re in a bad situation in terms of supplies.

A member of Sudan’s grassroots pro-democracy resistance committees is 30 years old. She was involved in a peaceful people power revolution in 2019 that brought down President Omar al-Bashir, the North African country’s longtime dictator and an indicted war criminal. She’s been active since then, she wants to see a democracy in Sudan.

We went out last night and did graffiti in the street just to remind people that our voices are here. We’re trying to be heard, we know the bullets are always louder than the voices, but we’re trying to make it through.

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 other medical personnel were not able to get access to the wounded after the latest unsuccessful attempt to impose a ceasefire.

“We continue our ask and appeal for an immediate secure and safe passage to the health care facilities,” Eisa tells NPR’s A Martinez, referring to both the wounded and healthcare personnel.

We need all of the various items that are used in the operating room for surgery, from simple, normal bandages to the more complex items used for procedures like gun wounds and chest traumas. We are in dire need of the blood and the bags that are used for the transfusion, and those are in shortage as well. Everything that we can get our hands on, it’s a critical need right now.

The Sudanese American Physicians Association says that 29 out of 59 hospitals in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum have been closed down by aerial bombing and intense shelling since a power struggle began. Most of the rest of the medical facilities have been damaged by gunfire or are overwhelmed by casualties.

Thousands of people fled because of the fighting between the forces of Army Chief Abdel Fatally al-Burhan and the leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, Hemedti. It’s also imperiled a transition to democracy that began with a popular uprising.

The two generals, former allies, helped oust the regime of Omar Bashir in 2019. But then the urban warfare began Saturday — shattering a power-sharing plan for a military ruling council that would have led to civilian oversight.

Historically, the primary health care centers in the neighborhood have been here. So they are much safer. They are not in the vicinity of the main streets. Medical personnel working in primary health care centers typically live in the same neighborhood, so it’s easy for them to get to them. That’s how it has been historically in Sudan. So this idea is now taking a lot of attention so that we can establish these as trauma centers to be equipped with maybe simple operating rooms that patients and the injured can get to easily. So that would be our plan B if the ceasefire has not really been responded to.

The only people affected by this war are the innocents and the people of Sudan. They all want a cease-fire. They all want an immediate attention to the medical part of this. They can see that there is a human rights crisis in Sudan, unfortunately.