KHAROUM: The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces accused each other on Saturday for an attack that damaged a bridge over the Jebel Awlia dam south of Khartoum, Western media reported. The extent of the damage to the dam was not clear, but severe damage to the infrastructure threatened major flooding in the area.
In recent days, a bridge in Khartoum and a crucial oil depot were damaged in attacks, for which the two sides also blamed each other.
Fighting has raged in recent weeks in the Jebel Awlia district in southern Khartoum state, displacing thousands of people in the region. The RSF claimed earlier that it had held a military base in the region.
Sudan: Warring Parties Trade Blame Over for Damaged Dam
The local “emergency room” volunteer organization said that civilians were killed in attacks by the RSF, as well as in the crossfire as military and RSF traded artillery in the region.
War broke out in Sudan’s capital city Khartoum in April amid tensions between the country’s army and RSF over integrating their troops during a transition to democracy.
In an address to the UNSC on Thursday, the UN assistant secretary-general for Africa, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, condemned the spread of the war to other parts of Sudan, which already has the largest number of displaced people across the world.
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“Sudan is confronting a convergence of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe and a disastrous human rights crisis,” she added.
About 25 million people need humanitarian help in Sudan, UN humanitarian operations chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement on Monday. The war in Sudan has left over 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the Non-Government Organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a figure that is considered an underestimate.
