PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s Armed Forces chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, arrived in the city of Port Sudan on Sunday, with the country in its fourth month of fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
According to a statement from the ruling sovereign council, Al-Burhan was met by his deputy Malik Agar and other government officials who — like the UN — have relocated operations to Port Sudan, which has been spared the fierce fighting that has gripped other parts of the country.
His visit came amid reports the city's health system was near to collapse due to power cuts and scarce supplies, and with staff shortages now exacerbated by striking doctors.
Medics in the Red Sea city say they have not been paid for four months, as the Sudanese government’s budget has been decimated by the conflict.
“It is exhausting, there are many patients and there’s a lot of suffering,” said Omar Al-Saeed, a striking nurse at Port Sudan Teaching Hospital.
“We only demand they just pay people something small so that they can keep going.”
While the airport in the capital Khartoum has been out of service since the conflict began, Port Sudan’s has remained operational for evacuation and relief flights, fuelling speculation of an overseas trip for Al-Burhan.
According to the UN, more than 100,000 people have fled to Port Sudan, filling up the already dense city’s hospitals and shelters, while fighting is focussed in Khartoum and the west of the country.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has warned that the war was fueling “a humanitarian emergency of epic proportions” in Sudan and that several diseases, including malaria, measles, and dengue fever, were on the rise.
Sudanese hospitals have long been under-funded, and strikes by medical staff have been frequent.
The war, which has damaged numerous medical facilities, has brought the healthcare system to its knees.
Doctors in Port Sudan have had to grapple with power cuts, intense humidity and medicine shortages, while patients are kept in close confines despite many having respiratory illnesses, hospital officials say.
“We are in a crisis, we pray that God eases it on us,” said Ayat Mohammed, supervisor at Dar Abnaa Al-Shamal medical center, which is dealing with overflow from hospitals with striking staff.
Local journalists who have flocked to Port Sudan to track Al-Burhan’s movements have floated the possibility that he will travel to Cairo.
Conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project show that nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
The real figure is thought to be much higher, with many victims unable to reach health services, entire cities cut off from the world and both sides refusing to report fatalities.
More than 4.6 million people have been displaced by the fighting both across borders and within Sudan, where 6 million people are “one step away from famine,” according to the UN.
Sudan’s Armed Forces have been fending off an unceasing offensive on their headquarters by the RSF.
“Rockets fell on houses, killing five people,” a medical source said on Sunday from Khartoum, where witnesses also reported airstrikes.
