DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) – Sudan’s army and a paramilitary force clashed outside Khartoum on Wednesday, undermining a ceasefire in their 11-day conflict, but the army expressed willingness to extend the ceasefire.
The army on Wednesday said its chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had given preliminary approval to a plan to extend the ceasefire for another 72 hours and send an army envoy to the capital. of South Sudan, Juba, for talks.
The Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) previously agreed to a three-day ceasefire that will end late Thursday. There was no immediate response from RSF to the proposal from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc.
The military said the presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti had worked on a proposal that would include extending the ceasefire and talks between the two forces.
“Burhan thanked IGAD and expressed his initial approval there,” the army statement said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed working together to create a sustainable end to the conflict, the State Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
Some of the heaviest fighting on Wednesday was in Omdurman, a city adjacent to Khartoum where the army is battling RSF reinforcements from other regions of Sudan, a Reuters reporter said. Heavy gunfire and airstrikes could be heard late into the night.
In Khartoum, which together with two neighboring cities is one of the largest urban areas in Africa, gangs broke out and there was widespread looting.
Since fighting broke out on April 15, air strikes and artillery have killed at least 512 people, wounded nearly 4,200, destroyed hospitals and limited food distribution in a vast country where a third of the 46 million people rely on humanitarian aid.
MANLOURISHED CHILDREN
The World Health Organization said only 16% of health facilities were functioning in Khartoum and predicted “many deaths” due to disease and lack of food, water and medical services including vaccination.
An estimated 50,000 acutely malnourished children have been interrupted by treatment because of the fighting, and those hospitals still operating face shortages of medical supplies, electricity and water, according to a UN update on Wednesday.
Deadly clashes erupted in Geneina in West Darfur on Tuesday and Wednesday resulting in looting and civilian deaths and raising concerns about worsening ethnic tensions, the update said.
The crisis has sent an increasing number of refugees to Sudan’s borders, with the UN refugee agency estimating that 270,000 people may have fled to South Sudan and Chad alone.
Foreign evacuees from Khartoum described bodies strewn on the streets, buildings on fire, residential areas turned into battlefields and youths roaming around with large knives.
The White House says a second American has died in Sudan.
“It’s terrible,” said Thanassis Pagoulatos, the 80-year-old Greek owner of the Acropole Hotel in Khartoum, after arriving in Athens to the embrace of emotional relatives.
“It was more than 10 days without electricity, without water, and five days with almost no food,” he added, describing the shooting and bombing. “Really, the people are suffering, the Sudanese people.”
FORMER DICTATOR LEAVES PRISON
Beyond the humanitarian crisis, civilian groups fear the violence will allow the military to tighten its grip and revive the influence of an ousted autocrat loyalist.
The army said Omar al-Bashir, the 79-year-old former dictator who was overthrown in 2019, had been transferred from Khartoum’s Kober prison to a military hospital, along with at least five of his former officer, before the battle began.
Over the weekend, thousands of prisoners were released directly from prison, including a former minister in Bashir’s government who, like him, is wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Bashir’s three-decade rule ended in a popular uprising four years ago. He is in prison, with spells in hospital, on Sudanese charges related to the 1989 coup that brought him to power.
“This war, ignited by the ousted regime, will lead to the downfall of the country,” said Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change (FCC), a political group spearheading an internationally-backed plan to transition to civilian rule. .
The plan was derailed by the outbreak of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two sides and the FCC missed an April deadline to launch the transition to democracy, largely over disagreements over the pooling of security forces.
Civilian groups have accused groups loyal to Bashir of seeking to use the conflict to find their way back to power. The RSF, whose leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo rose to power under Bashir but was later ousted, has bitterly opposed Islamists who backed the former army autocrat.
Sudan’s army took over in a coup two years after Bashir was toppled. Bashir’s whereabouts were discussed after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, revealed that he had left Kober prison with other former officials.
The ICC in The Hague accused Bashir of genocide, and Haroun of organizing militias to attack civilians in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. It declined to comment on the situation.
Reporting by Mehmet Emin Caliskan, Omer Berberoglu, Deniz Uyar in Istanbul and Michelle Nichols in New York and Tala Ramadan in Dubai; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
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