KHARTOUM: Despite a ceasefire proclamation by the warring factions, fighting resumed late Tuesday in Sudan. A UN envoy said the truce was partially holding. But there was no sign the two sides were ready for real discussions.
After US-Saudi mediation, the SAF and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire on Tuesday.
After dusk, Reuters reported gunfire and explosions in Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s sister cities on the Nile River.
The army also employed drones to try to drive fighters from a gasoline refinery in Bahri. It is the third city at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles.
UN Security Council special envoy Volker Perthes said the ceasefire “seems to be holding in some parts so far.”
However, neither party “seriously negotiate, suggesting that both think that securing a military victory over the other is possible.”
“This is a miscalculation,” Perthes said, adding that Khartoum’s airport was operational but the tarmac damaged.
Since the army and RSF began fighting on April 15, derailing a transition to civilian democracy, paramilitaries have ensconced themselves in residential neighbourhoods and the army has targeted them from the air.
Residential areas are battlefields. Air strikes and artillery have killed at least 459 people, wounded over 4,000, devastated hospitals, and hindered food supplies in a nation where a third of 46 million people depend on food aid.
An Omdurman hospital official reported a missile hit Al-Roumi medical centre on Tuesday and burst inside, hurting 13 people.
Freed inmates
Former Sudanese Minister Ahmed Haroun, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, said he and other officials permitted to escape Kober prison, indicating decreasing security.
Moreover, Haroun stated conditions at Kober had worsened after recent prison break reports. In a Sunday video, a demonstrator stated detainees released after a week without water or food.
While, Haroun and the other released officials served under ex-president Omar al-Bashir, who overthrown in a 2019 popular revolt after a 1989 military coup. The Hague-based ICC has accused Haroun of coordinating militants to commit genocide in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Bashir was missing.
Separately, the WHO reported that one of the warring parties took control of a Khartoum public health facility and expressed concern about measles and cholera germs in immunisations kept there.
If the three-day truce, which expires Thursday, fails, civilians in Africa’s third-largest country will be in greater risk.
A White House official said Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s national security team is talking to Sudan’s warring military leaders to cease violence and send humanitarian help.
Hospitals and other key services have been halted by the war, leaving many people isolated in their houses with scarce food and water.
With dead littering the streets, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) stated it couldn’t get supplies or staff into Sudan.
The UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) reported “extremely acute” shortages of food, water, medicine, and fuel, rising costs, and reduced activities for safety.
The UN refugee agency predicted hundreds of thousands will escape to neighbouring countries.
Why is everyone leaving us?
Those left behind by foreign governments felt abandoned.
“Why is the world abandoning us at a time of war?” asked Sumaya Yassin, 27, accusing foreign powers of selfishness.
Tens of thousands have fled to Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan since violence began.
Civilians left Khartoum in automobiles and buses, emptying one of Africa’s largest cities. Fighters roamed while city residents sheltered at home.
Stores have no food or water. “People have started to go out armed, with axes, with sticks,” French journalist Augustine Passilly said by phone as she tried to enter Egypt.
