Despite a truce aimed at allowing civilians to flee, air strikes have continued to pound Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. The army claimed it was attacking the city to flush out its paramilitary rivals, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), but the fighting intensified even as the warring sides agreed to extend the truce by another three days.
More than 500 deaths have been reported, with the true number of casualties believed to be much higher. Millions remain trapped in Khartoum. Army commander Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, are vying for power – and disagree in particular about plans to include the RSF into the army. The generals agreed to a humanitarian truce after intensive diplomatic efforts by neighbouring countries, the US, UK and UN, but it was extended and did not hold.
However, it remains unclear what they will do in the next stage of the deal arrived at with US and Saudi mediation, according to the army. Before the announcement of the extension on Sunday, the army said it had conducted operations against RSF troops north of the city centre. Foreign countries have been evacuating their nationals amid the chaos.
The UK government announced that it would organise a final evacuation flight on Monday, two days after it said it had ended its operation to bring British nationals out. The US organised a convoy to evacuate more US citizens by ship to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says a plane landed at Port Sudan with eight tonnes of relief supplies, including health kits for hospitals. However, with hostilities still ongoing, ICRC teams will need guarantees of safe passage from the parties to the conflict to deliver this material to medical facilities in locations with active fighting, such as Khartoum, according to a statement.
More than 70% of health facilities in the capital have been forced to close as a result of the fighting that erupted on 15 April. Speaking in Nairobi, Sudanese former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok warned that the conflict could become worse than those in Syria and Libya. Those wars have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and caused instability in the wider regions.
Hamid Khalafallah, from the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, is one of those unable to flee. “When there is very loud bombing and it gets closer, we take shelter in the house, try to all come to a central room, far from windows, far from walls, and so on, and just lie on the floor until it passes. When it’s a bit further, we try to use the quiet hours that we get – a couple of hours a day – to just quickly go out and get what we need which is also very risky but we have to do it.”
BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, who is monitoring events from Nairobi in Kenya, says the army will find it difficult to expel the RSF from Khartoum. For all the army’s superior firepower, the RSF are highly mobile and more suited to urban warfare, our correspondent adds.
The conflict in Sudan erupted on 15 April, when the military ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of mass protests. The Transitional Military Council, which replaced Bashir, had initially agreed to share power with the civilian opposition, but negotiations between the two sides broke down, and the situation has deteriorated into fighting between different factions of the military.
Sudan’s current crisis comes at a time when the country is already grappling with high inflation, food and fuel shortages, and a weak economy. The United Nations has called for an end to the violence and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. However, as the fighting continues.
