SUDAN – Japan, Germany and other nations are struggling to evacuate their citizens from Sudan amid fighting between the army and a paramilitary group, while water, healthcare and other services are becoming increasingly hard to access.

The conflict between the military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted at the weekend has engulfed the capital, Khartoum, and several other towns, and rendered parts of the country a no-fly zone.

The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 270 people have died and at least 2,600 have been injured, tallies that are set to rise as fighting continued for a sixth day on Thursday.

International efforts to broker a ceasefire have stalled, with mediators unable to access the North African country. United Nations staff within Sudan have been attacked and their homes and offices have been looted, internal UN reports seen by Bloomberg said.  

While the Sudanese Armed Forces said 177 Egyptian Air Force members had been repatriated from the Dongola airport in four Egyptian military transport planes, other nations are still evaluating how best to access their citizens.

Japan’s government said it plans to dispatch aircraft from its Air Self-Defence Force this weekend to Djibouti to evacuate about 60 of its nationals who are in Sudan, but did not specify when that will happen. 

South Sudan’s Oil Minister Puot Kang Chol said the violence has had a mild effect on the transport of materials and equipment to his nation’s oil fields, but that crude production has been maintained at 169,141 barrels a day.

“All our oil field facilities such as the pipelines, pump stations, field processing facilities, field-surface facilities and the export marine terminal in the Republic of Sudan are well protected” and have not been damaged, he told reporters in Juba, the capital.  

A Sudanese doctors’ association on Thursday said that 52 of the 74 hospitals in the capital and conflict-affected states could not admit patients or administer treatment. Nine of the hospitals have been bombed and 19 had to evacuate their staff, the group said.

The UN said in an internal report that further attacks on its agencies’ staff have been reported and that RSF troops were terrorising innocent civilians, foreign diplomats and aid workers.

In one instance, RSF members entered the house of a World Food Programme (WFP) employee in Khartoum’s Amarat district on Tuesday, stole his belongings and left him lying injured in the street. When the WFP sent personnel to extract the man, RSF forces fired at them and stole their mobile phones, it said.

“Threats to our teams make it impossible to operate safely and effectively in the country and carry out WFP’s critical work,” said a WFP spokesman.

The UN report also noted that a female UN staff member came under intense fire and heavy shelling early on Wednesday before escaping in a car to a hotel.

The Bank of Khartoum in the city of El-Fasher and the premises of several UN agencies were also looted, it said.

While an RSF spokesman did not reply to questions, the group issued a statement in which it denied targeting civilians and humanitarian workers and insisted that it respects international humanitarian law.

Led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF was born out of the notorious Janjaweed Arab militia army that former dictator Omar Al-Bashir used in the 2000s to violently quell discontent in western and central Sudan. It was formally established as paramilitary force in 2013 and continued to counter opposition to the government. 

The fighting, the culmination of a long-simmering power struggle between the army and the RSF, has upended plans for a power-sharing government that was supposed to lead Sudan to democratic elections after a 2021 coup. 

Officials from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional bloc, the Arab League, African Union, Gulf states, the European Union and the US have all been making calls to Gen Dagalo and Gen Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who heads the army, according to three Western diplomats who have been briefed on the situation.

The mediation efforts were not being coordinated and little headway had been made in bringing an end to hostilities, they said. 

Mr Mohammed Makawi, an adviser to Gen Dagalo, accused Gen Burhan of pulling out of the power-sharing accord that he said had been agreed by all parties and blamed the army for scuppering plans for a ceasefire by using helicopters to attack the RSF. 

There is a risk that the conflict could spill beyond Sudan. Small-scale clashes have already broken out between Sudanese soldiers and fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara state in the disputed Al-Fashaga border region, according to two people who are aware of the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment. BLOOMBERG