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Straits Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed
A view of a burned and destroyed escalator in the departure hall of the Khartoum Airport building, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Khartoum Sudan April 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig A view of Shambat Bridge, which was destroyed, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Omdurman, Sudan April 28, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig A view of a burned building and the tail of a Sudan Airways aircraft amid debris at Khartoum Airport, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Khartoum Sudan April 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig A view of the Sudan Airways building, showing signs of shelling and fire damage, seen after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Khartoum, Sudan April 27, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig A view of damaged tanks in front of the Central Bank of Sudan building, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Khartoum, Sudan April 27, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig KHARTOUM - Destroyed bridges, blackouts, empty water stations and looted hospitals across Sudan bear witness to the devastating impact on infrastructure from two years of war. Authorities estimate hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction would be needed. Yet there is little chance of that in the short-term given continued fighting and drone attacks on power stations, dams and fuel depots. Not to mention a world becoming more averse to foreign aid where the biggest donor, the U.S., has slashed assistance. The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling since April 2023, with tens of thousands of people killed or injured and about 13 million uprooted in what aid groups call the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Residents of the capital Khartoum have to endure weeks-long power outages, unclean water and overcrowded hospitals. Their airport is burnt out with shells of planes on the runway. Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred and once-wealthy neighbourhoods are ghost towns with destroyed cars and unexploded shells dotting the streets. "Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control," said Tariq Ahmed, 56. He returned briefly to his looted home in the capital before leaving it again, after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum. One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum. Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the centre of service provision, reverberates across the country. Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan. The U.N. is doing its own estimates. Sudan's oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem told Reuters. Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports. Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country's main port city in an attack Sudan blamed on the UAE. The Gulf country denied the accusations. All of Khartoum's power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going. LOOTED COPPER Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire. On Sudan's Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one metre (three feet) deep and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning. Khartoum's two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine. Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them. "There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed," said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11 billion. With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda. But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works. "What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation," he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools. In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralising services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Families find a new danger in Sudan's battered capital, unexploded shells
Unexploded ordnance lie on the ground on a street, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan April 27, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig Unexploded ordnance lie on the ground, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan April 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig Members of the Mine Action Center (MAC) place unexploded munitions in a vehicle on a street, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) April 27, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig Unexploded ordnance lie on the ground, after the Sudanese army deepened its control over Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan April 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig Destroyed combat vehicles stand on a street at the Sharg Elnil area, which was recently liberated by the Sudanese army, in Khartoum, Sudan March 15, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig A victim of unexploded ordnance lies on a bed while a member of his family touches his head at a hospital in Omdurman, as the Sudanese army deepens control in the city, which is still largely held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan April 28, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig KHARTOUM - The bespectacled, grey-bearded man ran out of the primary school in Khartoum's Amarat district, shaking with shock. He, like thousands of others, had returned to check on buildings retaken by the army after two years of civil war, only to find a new threat lurking in the rubble of Sudan's capital, in his case an unexploded shell under a pile of old cloth. "I'm terrified. I don't know what to do," Abdelaziz Ali, 62, said outside the school where he used to work as an administrator before the conflict started in April 2023 and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries moved in. "It's around 40 cm (16 inches) long – looks like anti-armor. This is a children's school." Ammunition and missiles litter streets, homes, schools and shops across the city where families have started to return to the buildings that the RSF commandeered. Sudanese and U.N. clearance teams are out checking, trying to make things safe. But they say they need more staff and funds, particularly since the U.S. aid cuts. In Amarat, Ali pointed at other shells on the dirt road between the school and a kindergarten. Several missiles were seen lodged in crushed vehicles. A caretaker from another building said authorities had found and removed ammunition and drones in the basement. But the anti-tank missiles were still there. "We're afraid one explosion could bring the whole place down," he said. More than 100,000 people have returned since the army took back control of Khartoum, and most of central Sudan, in a conflict that started over plans to integrate the military and the RSF. The RSF still holds huge swaths of western Sudan and has switched tactics from ground incursions to drone attacks on infrastructure in army-held areas. 'IT EXPLODED WITHOUT WARNING' Sudan's National Mine Action Centre said more than 12,000 devices have been destroyed over the course of the war. Another 5,000 have been discovered since operations expanded into newly re-taken territory, director Major General Khaled Hamdan said. At least 16 civilians have been reported killed and dozens more wounded in munitions explosions in recent weeks. The real toll is feared to be higher. "We only have five working teams in Khartoum right now," said Jamal al-Bushra, who heads the centre's de-mining efforts in the capital, focusing on key roads, government buildings and medical centres in downtown Khartoum, the site of the heaviest fighting. "We need $90 million just to start proper de-mining and surveying operations," Hamdan said. Crews pick up shells by hand and carefully place them into old suitcases and boxes, or side by side on the back of a pick-up truck, cushioned from the metal sides by a layer of dirt. Volunteer groups have taken up some of the work. "We've dealt with more than ten live shells today alone," said Helow Abdullah, head of one team working in the Umbada neighbourhood of Khartoum's twin city Omdurman. The United Nations Mine Action Programme nearly closed its doors in March after U.S. funding cuts, until Canada stepped in to support it. "We need hundreds of teams. We have just a handful," Sediq Rashid, the programme's head in Sudan, said. Work has also been hampered by problems getting travel permits, he added. "It's very worrying because these areas need to be checked (by) a professional team ... And then (people return)," he said. Rashid said the de-mining teams have barely scratched the surface, particularly in areas outside Khartoum that were also heavily affected. Without the proper sweeps, residents are left to fend for themselves. Sixteen-year-old Muazar lost his left arm and suffered severe wounds when a shell exploded while his family was clearing rubble in their home on Tuti Island where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet in Khartoum. "It was a 23 mm anti-aircraft round. It exploded without warning. The blast was two metres wide," Muazar's uncle said, standing by the boy's hospital bed in Omdurman. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Drone attacks cut power across Khartoum state two years into Sudan war
A destroyed tank is seen at a residential neighborhood as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo Drone attacks cut power across Khartoum and the surrounding state, authorities said on Thursday, as Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries pressed on with a campaign of long-distance attacks more than two years into their war with Sudan's army. The RSF, which has largely been pushed out of central Sudan in recent months, has switched tactics from ground assaults to drone attacks on power stations, dams and other infrastructure in army-held territory. Drones struck Khartoum state on Wednesday night, the Sudanese Electrical Company said in a statement. Staff were trying to put out large fires and assess and repair the damage, it added. The war between the two forces has devastated the country, pushed more than 13 million people out of their homes and spread famine and disease. Tens of thousands of people have died in fighting. RSF drone strikes on the army's wartime capital Port Sudan and other areas have plunged most of the country into extended blackouts. They have also hit water supplies, piling on the hardships and raising the risk of the spread of cholera and other diseases. Ground fighting continued in southern Omdurman, part of larger Khartoum, where the army was attacking pockets of RSF fighters, army sources said. Clashes have also displaced thousands of people on the war's most active frontline in Western Kordofan state. There, the army is trying to secure key oil-producing areas and push on into RSF territory in the Darfur region, where the army is trying to break a siege on the city of al-Fashir, its last remaining foothold there. The war, triggered by a dispute over a transition to civilian rule, has pushed half the population into acute hunger, according to the United Nations. Momentum in the conflict has repeatedly swung back and forth but neither side has looked close to winning outright. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sudan's Tuti islanders recount repression under paramilitary control
By El Tayeb Siddig KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Residents of Sudan's Tuti island at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile have emerged from paramilitary control to speak of hardships suffered and relief that their oppressors have been driven away. They say Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, who have been forced by the army off the island between the capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman, would block people from medical treatment, jail others and extort inhabitants. "I suffered from severe urinary retention," recalled elderly islander Omar al-Hassan, saying an RSF member stopped him from crossing a bridge to see doctors. "He claimed our papers were incomplete, but we had all the necessary documents. He just wanted money." The RSF, whose war with the army erupted in April 2023 and which still controls swathes of west Sudan, did not respond to a request for comment by Reuters. The RSF has either denied it violates human rights or said it would hold perpetrators to account, while accusing the army of widespread abuses. The U.N. accuses both sides in the civil war of abuses that may amount to war crimes. Tuti island, with its green landscape overlooking the majestic Nile waters, was once one of Sudan's most soothing spots, offering relaxation in a nation with a long history of war. Its population of about 10,000 could relax on beaches near lemon trees swaying in the breeze. People would also pass time at coffee shops, puffing on water pipes, perhaps discussing Sudan's complex, combustible politics. That was before the conflict between the army and RSF - once partners in a coup that toppled veteran autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir - erupted and ravaged Sudan. 'TUTI IS FREE' Now, in a microcosm of the war's devastation, Tuti's close-knit farming community are at risk of famine and have been ravaged by dengue fever. Sudan's military, headed by career army officer Abdel Fattah al-Burhan claimed control of Khartoum, including Tuti island, this week. 'We conducted a thorough and comprehensive cleanup of all areas of the island ... We tell the people to return and come back," said soldier Al-Tahir al-Tayeb. "We will only take our rights by this," he added, tapping on his gun. "We say to them, Tuti is free, and God is great." Nearby, a woman walked by a shop surveying destruction as people lingered at a mosque. RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, rose from lowly beginnings to head a widely feared Arab militia that crushed a revolt in Darfur, winning him influence and eventually a role as the country's second most powerful man, and one of its richest, as an enforcer for Bashir. The RSF, menacing young men armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns mounted on trucks, mastered desert warfare in the Darfur region but lack the discipline of the regular army. That was clear on Tuti island, said resident Abdul Fattah Abdullah, describing how RSF men followed him on four motorcycles and grabbed him as he was carrying vegetables from a market. The next 20 days, locked up in a small room with 32 army officers, were the hardest in his whole life, he complained. It did not end there. RSF fighters demanded the equivalent of $400, he said. "They harassed people, demanding either their gold or their money. May God punish them," said Abdullah. (Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
