Sudanese and foreigners yesterday streamed out of Khartoum and other battle zones as fighting shook a new three-day truce brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia, the latest attempt to pull Africa’s third-largest nation back from the abyss.
So far, a series of short ceasefires over the past week have either failed outright or brought only intermittent lulls in the fighting that has raged between the forces of the nation’s two top generals since April 15. The lulls have been enough for dramatic evacuations of hundreds of foreigners by air and land, which continued yesterday, but they have not been enough to bring relief to millions of Sudanese caught in the crossfire, struggling to find food, shelter and medical care as explosions and gunfire rip through their neighborhoods.
Calls for negotiations to end the crisis have been ignored, and for many Sudanese, the departure of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners and the closure of embassies is a terrifying sign that international powers expect the mayhem to only worsen.
Photo: AFP
Thousands of Sudanese have been fleeing Khartoum and its neighboring city, Omdurman, fearing that the rival camps would escalate their all-out battle for power once evacuations are completed.
In Khartoum, bus stations were packed yesterday morning with people who had spent the night there in the hope of getting on a departing bus. Drivers increased prices, sometimes 10-fold, for routes to the border crossing with Egypt or the eastern Red Sea city of Port Sudan.
Fuel prices have skyrocketed, and prices of food and water have doubled in many cases, the Norwegian Refugee Council said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken late on Monday announced that he had helped broker a new 72-hour ceasefire. The truce was to last until late tomorrow night, extending a nominal three-day truce over the weekend for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.
The Sudanese military, commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, yesterday said that they would observe the ceasefire. In separate announcements, they said Saudi Arabia played a role in the negotiations.
“This ceasefire aims to establish humanitarian corridors, allowing citizens and residents to access essential resources, healthcare and safe zones, while also evacuating diplomatic missions,” the RSF said in a statement.
The army announcement used similar language, adding that it would abide by the truce “on the condition that the rebels commit to stopping all hostilities.”
However, fighting continued, including in Omdurman.
Omdurman resident Amin Ishaq said there were clashes early yesterday around the state television headquarters and around military bases just outside Omdurman.
“They stop only when they run out of ammunition,” he said.
“Sounds of gunfire, explosions and flying warplanes are still heard across Khartoum,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, a senior figure in the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, a group that monitors casualties. “They don’t respect ceasefires.”
More than 420 people, including at least 291 civilians, have been killed and more than 3,700 wounded since the fighting began.
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