Plane crash kills nine in Sudan

Nine people, including four soldiers, were killed Sunday (Jul. 23) evening when a civilian plane crashed in Sudan due to “technical” reasons, the army said, as the war in the east African country entered its 100th day.

In Port Sudan, on the east coast largely spared by the war, the army said a child had survived the crash of an Antonov plane which killed nine others. Port Sudan airport is the only one still working in the country due to the conflict.

Since April 15, battles between the army led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, have killed more than 3,900 people, according to the latest toll from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

Over 2.2 million people have been internally displaced, mostly from Khartoum, the International Organization for Migration said early July.

On streets of Khartoum, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces appears to have the upper hand. Over the past three months, its forces have occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties, according to residents and activists, and turned them into operational bases.

The Sudanese army has responded with airstrikes and shelling of densely populated civilian areas.

Thousands who remain in the capital, particularly in Khartoum North, are trapped without water since the local water station was damaged at the start of the war.

Residents say there is only intermittent electricity and food has nearly run out.

"With the fighting, there is no market anymore and anyway we have no money," said another resident of Khartoum North, Essam Abbas.

To help them, the local "resistance committee," a pro-democracy neighborhood group, issued an emergency appeal.

"We have to support each other, give food and money and distribute to those around us," the committee wrote on Facebook.

In adjacent Omdurman, Khartoum’s other battle-scarred sister city, locally known violinist Khaled Senhouri "died from hunger" last week, his friends wrote on Facebook.

In his own online posts, Senhouri had said he was unable to leave home because of the fighting and had tried to hang on with the supplies that he had. It wasn’t enough.

There have also been reports of widespread destruction and looting across Khartoum and the nearby city of Omdurman. Humanitarian facilities have often been targeted. At least two World Food Program sites have been looted, the U.N. agency said, one in Khartoum and the other in the central city of El Obeid. 

MSF team attacked

Armed men attacked an 18-member team of Doctors Without Borders working at a key hospital in Sudan's war-torn capital of Khartoum, the aid group said Friday (Jul. 21).

“After arguing about the reasons for MSF’s presence, the armed men aggressively assaulted our team, physically beating and whipping them,” the group said on its website.

One of the drivers was briefly detained, MSF added. The group did not say whether the attackers were in uniform or provide other details. 

The MSF medical team was stopped on the road on Thursday while transporting supplies to the Turkish Hospital, located in the district of South Khartoum.

“The MSF is becoming seriously concerned that our presence in the Turkish Hospital will soon no longer be tenable,” MSF said, in a post on Twitter.