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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed
By Khalid Abdelaziz and Eltayeb Siddig KHARTOUM (Reuters) -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. (Additional reporting and writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Michael Perry and Andrew Cawthorne)
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Families find a new danger in Sudan's battered capital, unexploded shells
By Khalid Abdelaziz and Eltayeb Siddig KHARTOUM (Reuters) -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.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
After whirlwind gains, Sudanese military leaders hail 'turning point'
By Eltayeb Siddig KHARTOUM (Reuters) - After a week of whirlwind gains for the Sudanese army and allies in the capital Khartoum, leaders hailed a turning point in the civil war, speaking to reporters from inside the army's main headquarters that had been besieged since April 2023. The recapture of the al-Jaili refinery in northern Bahri last week, along with swathes of the city across the Nile from Khartoum, set the stage for the breaking the siege of the army General Command on Friday, and for the army to finally solidify positive momentum in the almost two-year war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Civilians could be seen by a Reuters witness cheering in the streets in Bahri and elsewhere, while soldiers surveyed the horizon from blown out windows at the central Khartoum base and celebrated as they roamed its grounds, at peace after a lengthy RSF onslaught. "Inch by inch, we'll go from here to al-Geneina, God willing," said one soldier on Sunday, referring to the country's westernmost city, one of the first to fall to the RSF early in the war, and where the RSF has been determined by the United States to have committed genocide. An army leader described it as a turning point. "From here, the armed forces will move forward to cleanse every remaining inch of our homeland, and from this point, we will see the return of all Sudanese from displacement, allowing them to resume their normal lives in their homeland with security, stability, and, God willing, peace," said army chief of staff General Mohamed Othaman al-Hussein. The war has displaced more than 12 million people, while plunging half the population into hunger, for which both the RSF and army are blamed. DRONE ATTACK ON HOSPITAL The RSF controls most of the Darfur region and wide swathes of the Kordofan region, both to the west of Khartoum. The army has in recent months retaken several parts of central Sudan and remains in control of the North and East. The RSF denies the army's gains and said on Monday it was deploying forces in the Sharg el-Nil district of Bahri. It has continued its assault on al-Fashir, the last holdout state capital in Darfur, and over the weekend dozens were killed in a drone attack on the city's last remaining hospital. The RSF denied responsibility and blamed the army. Analysts say the army may wait to recapture the rest of Khartoum, where the RSF remains widely deployed, before engaging in negotiations. The RSF has said it would support the formation of its own government, while army leaders have rejected the inclusion of the RSF in the Sudanese state, sparking fears of a formal partition of the country. But another military leader from the Joint Forces, a collection of formal rebel groups fighting alongside the army, indicated that they would continue to fight for the west of the country. "God willing, now that we have broken the siege on the General Command, you will hear about victories by the Joint Forces alongside our brothers in the army, regaining our bases in al-Daein, Nyala, al-Fashir, and Geneina [Darfur state capitals], " said Colonel Mohamed Hasaballah. (Writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Alex Richardson)
