Sudan fights Mashael, but the army agrees to extend the ceasefire

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The military says the plan includes sending envoys for talks. There has been no response yet from the RSF to the proposal.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces clashed on the outskirts of Khartoum on Wednesday to undermine a truce in the 11-day-old conflict, but the army signaled its willingness to extend the ceasefire.

The army said late on Wednesday that its commander, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had given its initial approval to a plan to extend the truce for another 72 hours and to send a military envoy to the South Sudanese capital, Juba, for talks.

The Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces earlier agreed to a three-day ceasefire that was due to end late Thursday. There was no immediate response from the RSF to the proposal from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc.

The army said the presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti had worked on a proposal that included an extension of the truce and talks between the two powers.

The army statement said, “Al-Burhan thanked the IGAD and expressed his initial approval for that.”

Some of the fiercest fighting on Wednesday was in Omdurman, a city next to Khartoum where the army was fighting RSF reinforcements from other parts of Sudan, a Reuters reporter said. Heavy gunfire and airstrikes were heard in the evening.

In Khartoum, which with two border cities is one of the largest metropolitan areas in Africa, gangs have been ransacked and looting is widespread.

Since fighting broke out on April 15, air and artillery strikes have killed at least 512 people, injured nearly 4,200, destroyed hospitals, and limited food distribution in the vast country where a third of the population of 46 million was already dependent on humanitarian aid.

Malnourished children

The World Health Organization said only 16% of health facilities were functioning in Khartoum and expected “many deaths” from disease and lack of food, water and medical services including immunization.

An estimated 50,000 severely malnourished children have had their treatment disrupted by the conflict, and those hospitals are still functioning and facing shortages of medical supplies, electricity and water, a UN update said Wednesday.

The update stated that bloody clashes broke out in El Geneina, West Darfur state, on Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in looting and killing of civilians and raising concerns about an escalation of ethnic tensions.

The crisis has pushed increasing numbers of refugees across Sudan’s borders, with the UN refugee agency estimating that 270,000 people may flee to South Sudan and Chad alone.

Foreigners evacuated from Khartoum described their bodies littering the streets, buildings burning, residential areas turned into battlefields and young men wielding large knives.

The White House said a second American had died in Sudan.

“It was horrible,” said Thanassis Pagolatos, an 80-year-old Greek owner of the Acropolis Hotel in Khartoum, after arriving in Athens in the sympathetic embrace of relatives.

“It has been more than 10 days without electricity, without water, and almost five days without food,” he added, describing the shooting and shelling. “Really the people are suffering, the Sudanese people.”

The former dictator leaves prison

Besides the humanitarian crisis, civic groups fear that the violence will enable the military to tighten its grip and revive the influence of loyalists to a removed autocrat.

The army said Omar al-Bashir, 79, the former dictator who was overthrown in 2019, was transferred from Khartoum’s Kober prison to a military hospital, along with at least five of his former officials, before hostilities began.

Over the weekend, thousands of prisoners were released from jail, including a former minister in Bashir’s government who is likewise wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Bashir’s three-decade reign ended with a popular uprising four years ago. He was in prison, with periods in hospital, on Sudanese charges related to the 1989 coup that brought him to power.

“This war, which was sparked by the deposed regime, will lead to the collapse of the country,” said the Sudanese Forces for Freedom and Change, a political grouping leading an internationally backed plan for the transition to civilian rule.

The plan was derailed by the outbreak of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both parties and the FCC missed the April deadline to begin the transition to democracy, largely because of disagreements over integrating security forces.

Civil groups have blamed groups loyal to Bashir for seeking to use the conflict to find a way back to power. The RSF, whose leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, rose to power under Bashir but was later overthrown, has staunchly opposed the Islamists who backed the former autocratic ruler in the military.

Sudan’s military took over in a coup two years after Bashir’s ouster. Al-Bashir’s whereabouts came into question after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, announced that he had left Kober prison with other former officials.

Al-Bashir has been accused by the International Criminal Court in The Hague of genocide, and Haroun has been accused of organizing militias to attack civilians in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. It declined to comment on the situation.

(Reporting by Mehmet Emin Kaleskan, Omer Berbroglu, and Deniz Uyar in Istanbul, Michelle Nichols in New York, and Tala Ramadan in Dubai). Written by Michael Georgy. Editing by Simon Cameron Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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