The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of attempting to break into several homes in Sudan and loot.
According to gender justice and democracy campaigner Hala Y Alkarib, she has been collecting testimony from friends and colleagues across the capital city, Khartoum.
She asserts that the RSF lacks a supply chain and is therefore relying on looting.
There is nobody to protect the people, she says, “because the Sudanese military and Sudanese police – both of them former partners of the RSF – are not quite oriented to provide or extend protections to civilians”.
With shops shut and power supplies intermittent at best, she says Khartoum’s inhabitants are at high risk – because many on the outskirts rely “100% on the informal economy” and people living in the centre used to have to leave the city to be able to put food on the table but now can’t.
There is nowhere to go, because it’s actually way more dangerous to step out because there is no safe routes, there is no instructions from the military, in terms of where to go. There is no hotlines, it’s extremely random. Some people are trying to leave the city but it’s extremely complex because, from what we’re hearing, there is also pockets of fighting that’s extending around Khartoum,” Hala Y Alkarib Gender Justice and Democracy Campaigner added.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s army has rubbished claims by its paramilitary RSF rivals that a day-long ceasefire agreement had been reached, calling it mere propaganda.
“We are not aware of any coordination with the mediators and the international community about a truce, and the rebellion’s declaration of a 24-hour truce aims to cover up the crushing defeat it will receive within hours,” a Sudan Armed Forces spokesman states on the Army Twitter page.
“We have entered a critical phase and our efforts are focused on achieving its objectives at the operational level,” the army statement adds.