Witnesses say seven people were killed this week in the first known clash in the Sudanese capital between fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and armed civilians, a development that, if repeated, adds an ominous layer to the three-month war between the army and the RSF.
News of the clash came after a call last month by army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan on able-bodied civilians to join the army in its war against the RSF. He has also called on civilian men to visit army bases where they would be handed firearms to defend themselves, their families and property.
The RSF, whose forerunner is a notorious Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, stationed thousands of its fighters deep in residential neighbourhoods since the early days of the war, leaving the army with the difficult task of trying to dislodge them while trying to avoid civilian casualties.
The paramilitary's fighters have since been consistently accused of breaking into and occupying homes whose inhabitants fled the fighting, as well widespread looting of homes, shops and banks.
There have also been reports of sexual assaults by RSF fighters against women, forcing many families to send female members to family and friends outside the capital for their safety.
The clash between the RSF fighters and civilians happened on Monday in the district of Haj Youssef in the capital's fiercely contested area of Sharq Al Neel in Bahri, one of the three cities that together with Khartoum and Omdurman make up the greater capital city.
RSF fighters arrived in two all-terrain vehicles and a lorry loaded with about 40 bodies of their comrades and went around homes asking for help to bury their dead in the local cemetery, according to two witnesses – Siddiq Al Imam and Mouawaya Noqd – who spoke to The National.
The fighters said that they needed help because army warplanes were flying over the area and could target them if they were in the open, the two witnesses said.
"No one objected to them burying their dead in our cemetery, but they provoked us when it became clear they wanted to use us as human shields," Mr Noqd said. "But we stood our ground."
Tensions rose when the men refused to help and an angry crowd soon gathered around the RSF fighters, they said. A gun battle then ensued between the neighbourhood's men and the RSF fighters in which four RSF fighters and three civilians were killed, they added. Four more civilians were injured.
"More RSF fighters arrived after the gun battle and arrested 15 men," Mr Imam said. "They released 12 of them on Tuesday morning but deployed sharpshooters on rooftops. It's very tense now."
There have been reports circulating for weeks in Khartoum about stand-offs between civilians and RSF fighters stationed in residential districts, but Monday's incident at Sharq Al Neel is the first known one to involve a gun battle and fatalities.
The tension between the RSF and civilians in Khartoum is partially a reflection of the cultural and economic gap separating the capital's residents from the RSF fighters, who are mostly drawn from the nation's impoverished regions such as Darfur and Kordofan in the west and south-west. Many feel discriminated against by the relatively better-off northern part of Sudan.
The harassment and fear endured by civilians at the hands of RSF fighters entrenched in their districts has in some cases forced them to leave their homes en masse.
In one case this week, the RSF ordered residents of Al Ashra neighbourhood in Khartoum's Al Sahafah district to leave their homes after they refused to co-operate with the paramilitary, according to eyewitness Amer Abdullah.
The war in Sudan broke out after weeks of tension between the army and the RSF over a political blueprint proposed by pro-democracy politicians that envisages the army quitting politics and the RSF being integrated into the armed forces.
The war created a huge humanitarian crisis, forcing more than three million people to flee their homes and leaving millions more trapped in the capital suffering lengthy power failures and water shortages, scarce health services and skyrocketing food and fuel prices.
The UN has warned that the country was headed towards "full-fledged" civil war and the US says neither side has an appetite for ending the war. A series of truces mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia were either ignored or not fully respected, although several regional attempts to end the war are now under way.
