An emotional moment for sky news Africa Correspondent, Yousra Elgabir was captured on video.
Sky Africa’s correspondent Yousra Elgabir was speaking to people who had fled from Sudan to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. In an unexpected moment whilst reporting with her team, Elgabir spots her uncle in the crowd.
What followed was a heartwarming exchange between the two, which ended with Elgabir saying, “One day we will all be in Sudan together, God willing.”
So what is happening in Sudan and why?
On the 15th of April fighting erupted across Sudan, including in Khartoum, the nation’s capital. A faction of the nation’s military regime is being led by two powerful, rivaling generals. For control of the African nation and its future, the opposing military factions are engaged in conflict. According to the World Health Organisation, the violence has resulted in more than 450 fatalities and 4,000 injuries thus far, causing a humanitarian crisis and sparking concerns about an ongoing and unpredictable civil war.
Thousands of people, including diplomats and aid workers, were left stranded in Sudan as a result of the sudden escalation in hostilities between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group known as Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states were among those to close their embassies and rush to evacuate their nationals.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, chief of the army and president of Sudan’s ruling council since 2019, and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly referred to as Hemedti, are the primary parties in the power conflict.
The rivalry’s roots are connected back to Omar al-Bashir’s reign as Sudan’s former president. Omar al-Bashir established powerful security forces over his thirty years in power, which he pitted against each other in an attempt to preserve control.
The notorious Janjaweed militias that al-Bashir employed to put down a revolt in Darfur in the early 2000s are where the RSF got its start. One of the biggest militias was led by Hemedti. An estimated 300,000 people died and 2.5 million were displaced. Government representatives and Janjaweed commanders were charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Al-Bashir organised the militias into the RSF, which was led by Hemedti. Along with fulfilling duties like border patrol, they also dispatched troops to fight with Saudi and Emirati forces in Yemen. But as the leaders of the army and the RSF fought for power, tensions had been rising for a while.
Later, Hemedti and al-Burhan joined forces to assist pro-democracy protesters and overthrow al-Bashir in 2019. However, two years later, they overthrew the transitional government that was supposed to restore democracy to Sudan and replaced it with a military regime. Since then, a fight between the rivals has been widely anticipated by observers.
The UN estimates that 10,000 to 20,000 people have fled during the conflict to Sudan’s western neighbor Chad. Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world and the fighting is happening amidst it’s worst humanitarian crisis. 15.8 million people—roughly a third of the population, and more than half of them children—need humanitarian assistance as a result of conflict, natural catastrophes, outbreaks of diseases, and economic hardships.
What can we do to help?
You can help the civilians of Sudan by donating to the organisations below;