Khartoum
Thousands of residents fled Sudan’s capital Wednesday as fighting between the army and paramilitaries raged for a fifth day after a 24-hour truce collapsed. Roughly 200 people have already been killed.
The violence erupted on Saturday between the forces of two generals who seized power in a 2021 coup: army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti”, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
It followed a bitter dispute between Burhan and Dagalo over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army – a key condition for a final deal aimed at resuming Sudan’s democratic transition.
“There is no ceasefire at all,” FRANCE 24’s regional correspondent Bastien Renouil reported from Nairobi, citing sources on the ground.
“The fighting in Khartoum continues and [the sources] say they could hear gunshots all night long, and that now planes are flying over the city bombing locations that they [the army] believe belong to the RSF. The RSF is fighting these planes, shooting anti-aircraft artillery.”
Civilians huddled in their homes were becoming increasingly desperate, with dwindling food supplies, power outages, and a lack of running water.
Their hopes of being evacuated were dashed on Tuesday when a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire collapsed within minutes of its proposed start at 1600 GMT.
