Al-Burhan stands among people for the first time since clashes erupted

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
24 Aug 2023 11:42

Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah al-Burhan stands amongst the people of Sudan after a months-long disappearance from the public eye.

Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan meets a number of residents of Al-Hara 100, in Omdurman, and drinks coffee with them on August 24, 2023 (Social media)

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese army, made his first public appearance outside of the army command compound in Khartoum since the war's start more than four months ago in a video circulated by the army on Thursday.

Al-Burhan appeared amongst the people after he had been absent from the public eye and videos for weeks at a time, while the Rapid Support Forces controlled most of the capital excluding the Sudanese army bases.

On social media, activists published images and videos, at dawn on Thursday, of al-Burhan inspecting military equipment at the Wadi Sayedna Air Base and the city of Omdurman.

Similarly, images of the chief sitting with locals, drinking coffee, also emerged amid intensifying clashes.

القائد العام للقوات المسلحة الفريق أول عبد الفتاح البرهان صباح اليوم يلتقي عددا من سكان الحارة ١٠٠ أم درمان ، وشرب معهم القهوة قبل أن يغادر إلى معقل القوات الخاصة بغرب أم درمان ..

#السودان #الخرطوم #القوات_المسلحة_السودانية pic.twitter.com/qqlWJybtB0
— Sajed moner (@sajed_moner) August 24, 2023

Activists on social media published scenes of al-Burhan inspecting at dawn today the Wadi Sayedna Air Base and the Omdurman vehicles.

البرهان يتفقد قاعدة وادي سيدنا الجوية فجر اليوم ويزور متحركات #امدرمان .#السودان #الخرطوم #القوات_المسلحة_السودانية #جيش_واحد_شعب_واحد #الدعم_السريع_مليشيا_ارهابيه #قحت_الذراع_السياسي_للتمرد pic.twitter.com/yUzGiQk2ZA
— Ahmed Omer (@Ahmed14Omer) August 24, 2023

Hostilities force about 5mln people out of Sudan's Khartoum Province

Since hostilities broke out between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, around 5 million people have left Khartoum, the capital province of Sudan, according to Thursday's statement to Sputnik by Siddiq Hassan Freini, the province's minister for social provision.

"According to current estimates, about 5 million residents of Khartoum province have moved to other provinces in Sudan," the Minister said.

According to Freini, the armed conflict has made the province's poverty worse.

"It [poverty] is estimated at about 80%, which increases the responsibility of the government in the future from a social point of view, when the war is over," the official added.

Violent clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese army started on April 15 and were centered around Khartoum. Since then, the parties to the conflict have enacted a number of brief, nationwide ceasefires, but none of them has yet contributed to a peaceful resolution. The battle has claimed hundreds of lives according to the UN, and the Red Cross has warned that continued conflicts run the risk of destroying the nation's healthcare system.

It is worth noting that in July, the conflict displaced some three million people out of their homes in less than three months, the United Nation's International Organization for Migration said.

With more than 2.2 million internally displaced Sudanese people and nearly 700,000 others who had to flee the country as a whole, the figures obtained back then by the IOM through its Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) revealed that the conflict displaced close to three million people.

The IOM revealed that the majority of the people were displaced from Khartoum (67%) and Darfur (33%) toward the Northern State (16%), the River Nile (14%), West Darfur (7%), and White Nile states.

Darfur, a vast western region on the border with Chad, has witnessed the deadliest violence since the war erupted.