Airstrikes and artillery exchanges on Saturday shook the Sudanese capital and armed men ransacked the Qatari embassy as the country’s warring generals kept up their struggle for control even as they agreed to a brief humanitarian pause.
With heavy fighting raging in Khartoum, the rival sides struck a deal on a seven-day ceasefire beginning tonight, the US and Saudi Arabia said in a joint statement after talks in Jeddah.
The ceasefire “shall remain in effect for seven days and may be extended with the agreement of both parties,” it said.
Photo: AFP
Multiple announced truces have been violated since fighting broke out five weeks ago, which the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency early yesterday.
“Unlike previous ceasefires, the agreement reached in Jeddah was signed by the parties and will be supported by a US-Saudi and international-supported ceasefire monitoring mechanism,” it said.
It said that subsequent talks “will focus on additional steps necessary to improve security and humanitarian conditions for civilians such as vacating forces from urban centers, including civilian homes, accelerating removal of impediments to the free movement of civilians and humanitarian actors, and enabling public servants to resume their regular duties.”
The power struggle between regular army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into fighting on April 15.
The conflict has killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians, and displaced more than 1 million.
The UN has warned of a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Africa’s third-largest country, where one in three people already relied on aid before the war.
Saturday’s ceasefire announcement comes two weeks after representatives of the warring generals first gathered in Jeddah for talks. By May 11, they had signed a commitment to respect humanitarian principles and allow in badly needed aid.
However, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths on Thursday said that there had been “important and egregious” contraventions of that agreement, which fell short of a ceasefire.
On Saturday, Qatar’s embassy was the latest diplomatic mission to be attacked, drawing condemnation from Doha.
“The embassy staff had previously been evacuated and ... none of the diplomats or embassy staff were subjected to any harm,” the ministry said.
It renewed calls for “an immediate halt to the fighting.”
Qatar did not specifically identify the RSF as responsible, but a statement from the pro-Burhan authorities put the blame squarely on the paramilitaries.
The embassies of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have also come under assault in the past few weeks.
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