Fighting in Sudan’s capital yesterday entered a second week as crackling gunfire shattered a temporary truce, the latest battles between forces of rival generals that have already left hundreds dead and thousands wounded.
Overnight, the heavy explosions that had previously rocked the city in the past few days had subsided, but yesterday morning, bursts of gunfire resumed.
Violence broke out on Saturday last week between forces loyal to Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Photo: AFP
The army on Friday announced that it had “agreed to a ceasefire for three days” for the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had called for a day earlier.
Daglo said in a statement that he had “discussed the current crisis” with Guterres, and was “focused on the humanitarian truce, safe passages, and protecting humanitarian workers.”
Two previous 24-hour ceasefires announced earlier in the week were also ignored.
The fighting has seen the RSF — a force tens of thousands strong, formed from members of the Janjaweed militia that led years of violence in the western Darfur region — take on the regular army, with neither side seemingly having seized the advantage.
In Khartoum, many civilians have ventured out only to get urgent food supplies or to flee the city.
Eid is meant to be spent “with sweets and pastries, with happy children, and people greeting relatives,” resident Sami al-Nour said.
Instead, there has been “gunfire and the stench of blood all around us.”
Late on Friday, the army accused the RSF of attacks in the capital’s twin city of Omdurman, where they released “a large number of inmates” from a prison, which the group denies.
Battles have also raged in Darfur, where Doctors Without Borders in the city of El Fasher said their medics had been “overwhelmed” by the number of patients with gunshot wounds, many of them children.
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