2023-06-18 03:24:00
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States announce the agreement of the representatives of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) for a ceasefire in Sudan for a period of 72 hours starting on Sunday,” he informed, in note, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The truce will come into force at 06:00 local time (01:00 GMT), added the same source. The former were almost always violated.
The ceasefire announcement comes after an intensification of clashes in Khartoum, the country’s capital, where 17 civilians died, including five children, according to a civil organization.
The intense fighting also accelerated the exodus in the region of Darfur (west), one of the most affected by the conflict, where doctors reported that hundreds of wounded were taken to Chad, a neighboring country, to receive treatment.
The fighting, which began in April, is between the head of the Army, General Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FAR), commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Since then, the two military commanders have agreed to several truces, which ended up falling apart.
– Distribution of help –
In announcing the new truce, the mediators said “the two parties agreed that during the ceasefire period they would refrain from carrying out deployments and attacks, using warplanes or drones (and) resupplying their forces.”
“They also agreed to allow freedom of movement and delivery of humanitarian aid across Sudan,” they added.
In the last two days, Khartoum has seen an intensification of air strikes, with lethal results, said the local resistance committee, a militant cell that organizes aid to the city’s population.
The FAR, which accuses the army of concentrating its bombing on residential areas, claimed to have shot down a fighter jet belonging to regular forces.
Several neighborhoods in Khartoum are without potable water and the electricity network works only a few hours a week.
The situation is equally worrying in Darfur, “prisoned by violence”, warned the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Reports of mass attacks against civilians are multiplying in this region, from where some 149,000 people have fled to Chad since the outbreak of fighting on April 15, according to UN data.
Darfur, which was ravaged by civil war in the early 2000s, is heading for a new “humanitarian disaster”, warned the UN assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, on Thursday.
About 2,000 people have died in Sudan due to the conflict, according to the NGO Acled.
The UN estimates the number of people displaced throughout the country at 2.2 million.
About 25 million of Sudan’s 45 million people currently depend on humanitarian aid to survive.
Meta
#Conflicting #generals #agree #72hour #truce #Sudan