Residents of Omdurman have described widespread looting by soldiers from the Sudanese armed forces in the only part of the city they still control.
People living in Ombada district in the west of Omdurman, which lies across the Nile from the capital, Khartoum, said soldiers had taken everything from cars to spoons, and had shot at those who tried to stop them.
Mariaim Yassin said soldiers raided the house of her mother shortly after she had died, taking an air conditioning unit, a television and some clothes out on the back of a donkey. Neighbours who tried to stop them had live bullets shot at their feet, though no one was injured.
Yassin said her family had been forced to leave their homes due to clashes between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group earlier in the war. When the fighting subsided the family returned. “We were hopeful when the army deployed in our area,” she said, “but they keep looting everything.”
Yassin took her mother’s furniture to her own house for safekeeping but got stopped one day by three soldiers who asked her where it had gone. “I got really scared and froze and could not tell them anything,” she said, adding that the soldiers left when a male neighbour appeared.
The homes of people from the Rizeigat community, which makes up the core of the RSF, have been badly affected. Soldiers have been seen on a daily basis leaving the houses of Rizeigat people who fled to other parts of Sudan earlier in the war, pushing carts full of items including beds, tables and televisions.
Almost all of the houses in the western part of the Ombada 19 neighbourhood have open front doors – a sign that they have been looted.
In some instances, soldiers have been looting items previously looted by residents who had entered the homes of wealthy people who fled at the beginning of the war, which broke out in April. The conflict has killed more than 12,000 people, displaced more than 6.5 million, and severely hit Sudan’s economy.
One man living in a Rizeigat neighbourhood got shot last month in his leg by soldiers while trying to prevent them from stealing from him. The same day, four local women disappeared. The family of one of them said they found her earrings and passport at a hospital in an army-controlled area. They were told she had been buried but were given no further details.
The RSF has also been accused of looting in areas under its control, including banks in central Khartoum, as well as people’s homes and cars. There have been reports of looted items being sold in Chad and Niger.
One explanation for the looting is that regular army salaries are low. Soldiers can expect to earn about 10 times less than their counterparts in the RSF, which controls vast lands in the western Darfur region rich in gold and other minerals.
The army did not respond to a request for comment. An RSF advisor denied that its fighters were responsible for any looting.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of a handful of organisations still providing vital aid across Sudan, said last week that the situation faced by millions of people in the country was dire.
“I have never, in all my years, seen such a horrific mega-catastrophe with so little attention or resources to reach people in their hour of greatest need,” said Jan Egeland, the NRC’s secretary general. “Millions are trapped in the crossfire, in ethnic violence, in bombardments, and we are simply not there,” he told Agence France-Presse.
Last weekend, the army and the RSF both cast doubt on on an announcement by regional mediators that they had committed to a ceasefire and political dialogue.
IGAD, a grouping of East African nations, has sought along with the US and Saudi Arabia to mediate an end to the conflict.
IGAD had said that army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo had agreed to meet for the first time since the outbreak of fighting as well as a proposal for an unconditional ceasefire.
In a statement on Sunday, the army-aligned foreign ministry said it did not recognise the IGAD statement as it did not incorporate notes it had made, in particular that the meeting with Dagalo was conditional on a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of RSF troops from the Khartoum.
Meanwhile, the RSF said its acceptance of the meeting was on condition that Burhan did not attend in his capacity of head of state, a post he has held since 2019, when the army and RSF worked together to oust the country’s long-ruling dictator Omar al-Bashir.
The army, which regards the war as a rebellion by the RSF, is unlikely to accept such a stipulation.
