Fighting Re-Erupts In Sudan Despite A 72 Hour Ceasefire Declaration

Illustration of the evacuation of US citizens from Sudan. (Wikimedia Commons/SSgt Robert L. Fisher III)

JAKARTA - Fighting flared again in Sudan late on Tuesday despite a ceasefire declaration by the warring factions, as more people fled the capital Khartoum while prisoners were allowed to leave prisons.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire that began on Tuesday, after negotiations mediated by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

However, gunfire and explosions were heard after nightfall in Omdurman, one of Khartoum's twin cities on the Nile where troops used drones to target RSF positions, a Reuters journalist said, as reported by April 26.

Soldiers are also using drones to try to dislodge fighters from a fuel refinery in Bahri, the third city at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers.

Since fighting between the army and the RSF erupted in Sudan on April 15, derailing the transition to civil democracy, the paramilitaries have positioned themselves in residential districts and the army is trying to target them from the air.

The battle has turned residential areas into battlefields. Air and artillery strikes have killed at least 459 people, injured more than 4,000, destroyed hospitals and restricted food distribution in a country already dependent on aid for a third of its 46 million people.

A projectile hit the Al-Roumi medical center in Omdurman on Tuesday, detonating inside the facility and injuring 13 people, a hospital official said.

In a further sign of deteriorating security, former Minister Ahmed Haroun, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, said he and other officials were allowed to leave Kober prison.

Following reports of jailbreaks in recent days, Haroun said conditions in Kober were getting worse. A protester jailed there said in a recorded statement on Sunday the detainees had been released after a week without water or food.

Haroun and the other officials who were released served under former President Omar al-Bashir who came to power in a 1989 military coup and was ousted in a popular uprising in 2019.

The ICC in The Hague accuses Haroun of organizing militias to attack civilians in genocide in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Bashir's whereabouts were not immediately clear.

Meanwhile, the exodus of embassies and aid workers from Africa's third-largest country has raised fears that remaining civilians will be in greater danger if the faltering three-day ceasefire deal, which expired on Thursday, does not go into effect.

Since the fighting erupted, tens of thousands of people have fled to neighboring Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.

Foreign countries have flown embassy staff out after several attacks on diplomats, including the killing of an Egyptian attache who was shot on his way to work.