Violence and fighting continued across Khartoum on Sunday, hours after the two conflicting parties for power in Sudan pledged a one-week cease-fire, starting Monday evening.
A resident of the capital, Khartoum, confirmed to AFP on Sunday morning that he had heard increasingly violent “air strikes”, explaining that it “shook the walls of houses”. In southern Khartoum, an eyewitness spoke of “renewed clashes in the Sahafa area.”
Sudan has been witnessing a conflict since April 15th between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, which reject a plan to integrate them into its ranks. Since the outbreak of the battles, about a thousand people have been killed, most of them civilians, and have prompted more than a million Sudanese to flee or seek refuge in neighboring countries.
And the United States and Saudi Arabia announced on Saturday evening, in a joint statement, that representatives of the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces had agreed to a week-long ceasefire, which would start on Monday. The statement stated that the cease-fire “can be extended with the consent of the two parties.”
The statement also stated that the two parties to the conflict also agreed to “delivery and distribute humanitarian aid, restore basic services and withdraw forces from hospitals and basic public facilities,” and that the cease-fire “will enter into force at 21:45 Khartoum time (19:45 GMT) on the 22nd.” May” and lasts seven days. And on Sunday, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths renewed his call for “the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
“we don’t trust”
This agreement is not the first since the start of the war, as the two sides agreed to nearly 12 truces, all of which they violated minutes after it entered into force. “We hope that the mediators will monitor the implementation” of the agreement, Hussein Mohamed, a resident of Bahri, north of Khartoum, told AFP, noting that this truce might give him “a good opportunity for my sick mother to see the doctor.”
In El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, Adam Issa told AFP by phone: “We do not trust the conflicting parties (…) We want a final ceasefire, not a temporary truce.”
The joint US-Saudi statement confirmed that “contrary to the previous ceasefire, the agreement reached in Jeddah was signed by the two parties, and it will be supported by an internationally supported ceasefire monitoring mechanism” by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States and the international community.
The ongoing war left huge losses in the infrastructure, as most hospitals went out of service, whether in Khartoum or the Darfur region in the west of the country, where the fighting is also intensifying, and those who were unable to flee from the capital’s population of nearly five million people were forced to stay in their homes without water or water. electricity.
Humanitarian teams have been calling for weeks to secure safe passages to transport medicines, fuel and foodstuffs, in an attempt to provide some services that have been deteriorating for decades.
