Sudan's RSF attacks army amid cholera outbreak

A paramilitary drone strike hit a fuel depot and a military base in war-torn Sudan’s south Tuesday, a military source said, as the capital Khartoum battles a deadly cholera outbreak.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), targeted the city of Kosti in the White Nile State, after weeks of a long-range drone campaign that has hit vital infrastructure across the country.

The RSF and regular army have been locked in a devastating war since April 2023.

“The drone strike caused the depot to catch fire,” the military source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.

Eyewitnesses in Kosti, some 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Khartoum, reported hearing explosions and seeing columns of thick smoke over the city.

The RSF drone offensive began after the army wrested back control of the capital in March.

Last week, army forces pushed the paramilitaries out of their last holdouts in the greater Khartoum area.

This month, the RSF has launched strikes across Khartoum, including three power stations, triggering a massive blackout that disrupted electricity and water services and unleashed a cholera outbreak.

In a statement on Tuesday, the army-aligned health ministry reported more than 2,700 cholera infections and 172 deaths in just seven days across six states, with 90 percent of cases concentrated in Khartoum state.

Cholera is endemic to Sudan, but outbreaks have become worse and more frequent since the war broke out, wrecking already fragile water, sanitation and health infrastructure.

Last Tuesday, the ministry said 51 people had died of cholera out of more than 2,300 reported cases over the past three weeks, 90 percent of them in Khartoum state.

– Lying on hospital floors –

With electricity supply and subsequently the local water network out of service, residents have been forced to turn to unsafe water sources, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

“Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, said in a statement.

In Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, residents say they have had no electricity for nearly two weeks.

“We now fetch water directly from the Nile, buying it from donkey carts that bring it in barrels,” resident Bashir Mohamed said.

According to a doctor at Omdurman’s Al-Nao hospital, the capital’s main functioning health facility, residents have resorted to “drinking untreated Nile water, after the shutdown of water pumping stations”.

He said this “is the main reason for the rapid spread” of cholera.

Medics in the already overwhelmed hospital are struggling to keep pace with the outbreak, and the local emergency response room (ERR) has issued a call for more volunteers.

“The number of patients exceeds the hospital’s capacity,” a member of the ERR told AFP, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.

“There is not enough medical staff. Some patients are lying on the floors in hospital corridors,” he said.

Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal illness caused by ingesting contaminated water or food, can kill within hours if untreated.

It is easily preventable and treatable when clean water, sanitation and timely medical care are available.

Sudan’s already fragile healthcare system has been pushed to “breaking point” by the war, according to the World Health Organization.

Up to 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have at some point been forced to close because of the fighting, according to the doctors’ union, with health facilities regularly stormed, bombed and looted.

The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.