WAD MADANI: Flames gripped the Sudanese capital on Sunday and paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters for the second day in a row, witnesses reported, as fighting raged into its six month.

“Clashes are now happening around the army headquarters with various types of weapons,” witnesses said on Sunday from Khartoum, while others reported fighting in the city of El-Obeid.

Battles between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified a day ago, resulting in several key buildings in central Khartoum being set alight.

In social media posts, users shared footage of flames devouring landmarks of the Khartoum skyline, including the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower — a conical building with glass facades that had become an emblem of the city.

Desperate Sudanese face long wait for passports to flee

Users mourned Khartoum, a shell of its former self, in posts that showed buildings — their windows blown out and their walls charred or pockmarked with bullets — continuing to smoulder.

Since war erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Ham­dan Daglo, nearly 7,500 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

It has displaced more than five million people, including 2.8 million who have fled the relentless air strikes, artillery fire and street battles in Khartoum’s densely-populated neighbourhoods.

The millions that remain in the city woke up on Sunday to find clouds of smoke obscuring the skyline, as the sound of bombs and gunfire burst through the capital.

“We can hear huge bangs,” said witnesses from the Mayo district of southern Khartoum, where the army targeted RSF bases with artillery fire.

The worst of the violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, where ethnically-motivated attacks by the RSF and allied militias have triggered renewed investigations by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes.

There has also been fighting in the southern Kordofan region, where witnesses again reported on Sunday artillery fire exchanged between the army and the RSF in the city of El-Obeid.

Desperate Sudanese, meanwhile, face endless wait to get passports to flee the country.

Marwa Omar was one of hundreds who lined up at dawn to try and get passports in Port Sudan. Fifteen hours later, she still had nothing to show for it.

Since the authorities inaugurated a new passport office in the eastern city of Port Sudan in late August, hundreds of people have lined up all day, every day. They are desperate to obtain paperwork that will allow them to leave Sudan’s deadly war behind.

Asked where she intended to go, Omar replied: “Anywhere but here. This isn’t a country anymore. There’s nothing left. We can’t live or put food on the table or educate our children,” the mother of four said.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2023