Sporadic clashes in Sudan as a 72-hour ceasefire takes effect

KHARTOUM – Renewed clashes in Sudan’s capital and other areas of the country broke out on Tuesday, hours after a 72-hour ceasefire agreed by warring factions came into effect.

Smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the presidential palace in Khartoum, where residents said there was fighting between army soldiers and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Tuesday morning.

There was also violence in the nearby city of Omdurman and in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, according to eyewitnesses.

Otherwise, the truce appeared to be holding.

The clashes came hours after Sudanese army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the RSF, backed a 72-hour humanitarian truce.

The Sudan Armed Forces said the United States and Saudi Arabia mediated the truce.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the agreement late on Monday, and he said that it followed two days of intense negotiations. The RSF confirmed in Khartoum that it had

agreed to the ceasefire, starting at midnight, to facilitate humanitarian efforts.

Mr Blinken in a statement had urged the Sudan Armed Forces and RSF “to immediately and fully uphold the ceasefire”.

He said the US would coordinate with regional, international and Sudanese civilian interests to create a committee that would oversee work on a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian arrangements.

The two sides have not abided by several previous temporary truce deals. 

But despite the latest fighting, Khartoum was calmer than it has been since the start of the conflict.

Foreign governments used the lull in fighting to

extract their citizens from the country.

The ceasefire is “a potential lifesaver for civilians who have been trapped in their homes without the ability to access food, clean water, and medical care”, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.

“Street battles and the use of heavy explosive weapons in Khartoum have had a devastating impact on civilians and critical infrastructure over the last week, forcing many to flee or seek shelter.”

Diplomats have so far failed to get Mr Burhan and Mr Dagalo to agree to talks on ending the conflict, the culmination of a long-simmering struggle between the army and the RSF.

Fighting erupted

between the Sudan Armed Forces and the RSF on April 15.

It has killed at least 427 people, knocked out hospitals and other services, and turned residential areas into war zones.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the violence in a country that flanks the Red Sea, Horn of Africa and Sahel regions “risks a catastrophic conflagration... that could engulf the whole region and beyond”.

The UN Security Council planned a meeting on Sudan on Tuesday.

Thousands flee

Tens of thousands of people, including Sudanese and citizens from neighbouring countries, have fled in the past few days, including to Egypt, Chad and South Sudan, despite instability and difficult living conditions in some of the places they have gone to.

Foreign governments have been working to bring their nationals to safety.

One 65-vehicle convoy took dozens of children, along with hundreds of diplomats and aid workers, on an 800km, 35-hour journey in searing heat from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

For those remaining in Africa’s third-largest country, where a third of its 46 million people needed aid even before the violence, the situation was increasingly bleak.

There were acute shortages of food, clean water, medicine and fuel, and limited communications and electricity, with prices skyrocketing, said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq.

He cited reports of looting of humanitarian supplies and said “intense fighting” in Khartoum as well as in the Northern, Blue Nile, North Kordofan and Darfur states was hindering relief operations.

Facing attacks, aid organisations were among those withdrawing staff, and the World Food Programme suspended its food distribution mission, one of the largest in the world.

“The quick evacuation of Westerners means that the country is on the brink of collapse. But we expect a greater role from them in supporting stability by pressuring the two sides to stop the war,” said 43-year-old academic Suleiman Awad in Omdurman.

Several nations, including Canada, France, Poland, Switzerland and the US, have halted embassy operations until further notice.

Fighting calmed enough at the weekend for the US and Britain to get embassy staff out, triggering a rush of evacuations of hundreds of foreign nationals by countries ranging from Gulf Arab states to Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Japan said all its citizens who wished to leave Sudan had been evacuated.

Paris said it had arranged evacuations of 491 people, including 196 French citizens and others of 36 other nationalities. A French warship was heading for Port Sudan to pick up more evacuees.

Four German air force planes had evacuated more than 400 people of various nationalities from Sudan as at Monday, while the Saudi Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it had evacuated 356 people, including 101 Saudis and people of 26 other nationalities.

Several countries sent military planes from Djibouti. Families with children crowded into Spanish and French military transport aircraft, while a group of nuns were among the evacuees on an Italian plane, photographs showed.

The UN Secretary-General urged the 15 members of the Security Council to use their clout to return Sudan to the path of democratic transition.

Islamist autocrat Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a popular uprising in 2019, and the army and RSF jointly mounted a 2021 military coup.

But two years later, they fell out during negotiations to integrate and form a civilian government.

Sitting at the crossroads of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan has drawn interest from foreign powers including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Western powers have dangled billions of dollars in frozen aid in a push for a return of civilian rule after a 2021 coup in a country also coveted by Russia and China for its strategic Red Sea coastline and mineral resources.

Egypt has historically backed the army in Sudan, and the two nations are aligned in opposing the construction of a massive hydro-power dam in Ethiopia – the neighbouring country that’s the main source of their fresh water.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have forged close ties with the RSF through the use of its fighters in a war in Yemen, while Mr Dagalo is thought to have business links in the Gulf. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS