(Khartoum) The camps of the two warring generals in Sudan agreed to a 72-hour truce from Sunday, according to Saudi and US mediators, as fighting intensified in Khartoum on Saturday, killing civilians.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States announce the agreement of representatives of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for a ceasefire throughout Sudan for a period of 72 hours from from Sunday,” a statement from the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.
This is yet another truce, after many others which have hardly been respected.
The ceasefire is due to come into effect Sunday at 6 a.m. local time (12 a.m. EST), according to the same source.
Apart from halting all movement and attacks, the two sides agreed to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid throughout Sudan, according to the statement.
PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Residents of Khartoum were preparing food on Friday as airstrikes intensified in the city.
The ceasefire announcement comes as fighting rages in Khartoum where airstrikes and explosions have left civilians dead.
The fighting between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, has plunged this East African country, one of the poorest in the world, into a crisis. inextricable.
According to witnesses in Khartoum, airstrikes have intensified in the past two days.
Mediation “by bullets”
The FSR, which accuses the army of specifically targeting residential areas, claimed to have shot down an army fighter plane on Saturday. In a video shared by the paramilitaries on Twitter on Saturday, brick houses can be seen destroyed and blankets covering what appear to be dead bodies.
“The bullets will act as a mediator” between the army and the paramilitaries, General Yasser Atta, deputy army chief, said in a video released on Friday.
PHOTO OBTAINED BY REUTERS
A large plume of smoke was visible from the air in a district of Khartoum on Saturday
Despite attempts at mediation led in particular by Riyadh and Washington, no scenario of a return to peace is in sight.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry warned in its statement on Saturday that “in the event that the parties fail to respect the 72-hour ceasefire, the facilitators will be forced to consider postponing the Jeddah talks” in Saudi Arabia where negotiations between rival camps have been held for several weeks.
Firings with “various types of weapons” were also reported by residents of southern Khartoum, while in the northern suburbs resound “rocket and heavy artillery fire”, witnesses told AFP.
In this chaos, entire districts of the capital are deprived of drinking water and electricity only works for a few hours a week.
Heavy artillery shelling also targeted Khartoum North (Bahri) and fighting occurred in the Al-Shajara region (south) near a military base, witnesses reported.
The situation is just as alarming in the Darfur region, where “violence is raging”, alerted the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Saturday.
Testimonies of large-scale violence against civilians are increasing there, and according to the UN, more than 149,000 people have fled to Chad since the fighting began on April 15.
In recent days alone, “6,000 people have fled the town of El-Geneina” (West Darfur), to find refuge in the town of Adré in Chad, MSF said on Saturday.
“The situation is frankly overwhelming,” says Dr.r Seybou Diarra, MSF coordinator for the Adré region.