Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces agree ceasefire, says Blinken
The two opposing forces in Sudan’s civil war have agreed a three-day ceasefire, according to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
“Following intense negotiation over the past 48 hours, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have agreed to implement a nationwide ceasefire starting at midnight on 24 April, to last for 72 hours,” Blinken said in a written statement on Monday issued two hours before the ceasefire was due to start.
Previous attempted ceasefires have failed over the course of 10 days of fighting that has so far killed at least 427 people and wounded more than 3,700, according to UN agencies. Hours before Blinken’s announcement, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, had warned that the fighting could “engulf the whole region and beyond”.
“We must all do everything within our power to pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss,” Guterres said.
Blinken’s announcement suggested that the three-day ceasefire was intended to lead to talks on a longer-term truce.
“To support a durable end to the fighting, the United States will coordinate with regional and international partners, and Sudanese civilian stakeholders, to assist in the creation of a committee to oversee the negotiation, conclusion and implementation of a permanent cessation of hostilities and humanitarian arrangements in Sudan,” the secretary of state said.
Sudanese civilians trapped by the sudden outbreak of fighting are desperately short of food, water and medicine, aid agencies said.
“Morgues are full. Corpses litter the streets,” said Attiya Abdallah, head of the doctors’ union, on Monday according to the French Press Agency (AFP), saying that heavy shelling of south Khartoum had caused scores of new casualties.
Over the weekend, nations from around the world carried out evacuations of their diplomats and other civilians.
On Monday, a Royal Air Force transport plane landed at Port Sudan in the north-east of the country, with the aim of collecting British nationals who managed to reach the north-eastern coastal city from Khartoum and elsewhere in the country. On Monday, a UN convoy arrived from the capital carrying 700 people, an 850km journey.
The United Nations head of mission, Volker Perthes, said the convoy arrived safely.
“Thirty-five hours in a not so comfortable convoy are certainly better than three hours’ bombing and sitting under the shells,” he said.
The violence in Sudan has pitted army units loyal to its military ruler, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Battles have been raging in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman over the past nine days.
The US military evacuated just under 100 embassy staff from Khartoum in three helicopters on Sunday, but the White House has said that a wider effort to airlift other Americans is unlikely in the next few days. Instead, the Pentagon said it is providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to help the state department identify potential land routes out of the country.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said more than 1,000 EU citizens had been taken out during a “long and intense weekend” of airlift missions carried out by France, Germany and others. Beijing said it had evacuated an initial group of Chinese nationals and would “try every means to protect the lives, properties and safety of 1,500-plus Chinese compatriots in Sudan”.
Source: The Guardian
