Village in Sudan leveled to the ground by warring parties: BBC

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
29 May 2023 12:18

One satellite image shows the entirety of Abu Adam, a village south of Darfur, burned to the ground.

Residents of a refugee camp gather around the burned remains of makeshift structures, in Genena, Sudan December 29, 2019 (AP)

A BBC article tackling the progress of the conflict in Sudan reports that entire villages west of the capital have been pillaged by the warring parties: referencing satellite images as visual evidence of the dire situation in Sudan.

One satellite image shows the entirety of Abu Adam, a village south of Darfur, scorched by the combat fire between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group.

Satellite images of Abu Adam village (Planet Labs PBC via BBC)

Nyala, which borders Abu Adam, has been suffering from intermittent electricity cuts, due to fuel scarcity, cutting off the locals almost completely from the outside world.

BBC columnist, Barbara Plett-Usher, managed to get input from a local journalist Essa Daffallah.

"The RSF stormed the city with dozens of pickup trucks mounted with guns, and a large number of motorbikes," he said, adding that on Friday 19 May, "NGO offices and shops were looted."

"The hospital was emptied because it was in the fighting zone, most of the pharmacies were looted. All the residential areas in Nyala have been completely sealed off by barricades and digging ditches, so that the militias can't enter the residential districts."

Satellite images of the Nyala market (Planet Labs PBC via BBC)

A local activist, also, estimated that more than 600,000 internally displaced individuals who relied exclusively on humanitarian aid have received no assistance for the past month because of the heated clashes.

Yesterday, Sudan's army leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, accused United Nations Special Envoy Volker Perthes of stoking a brutal conflict with paramilitaries in a letter in which he called for replacing Perthes.

Commenting on the accusation, the United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he was "shocked" by Al-Burhan's letter, which called for "the nomination of a replacement" to Perthes and accused him of committing "fraud and disinformation" in clearing the way for a political process, which broke down into six weeks of catastrophic clashes.

Al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, were supposed to meet for UN-mediated talks on April 15, the day the clashes erupted in Khartoum.

The gathering attempted to restart a transition to civilian administration that had been stalled since 2021 when Al-Burhan and Dagalo took control in a coup before splitting off. As their rivalry grew worse, the world community attempted to persuade them to strike an agreement on the incorporation of Dagalo's RSF into the regular army.