the Army and the FAR resume fighting after the end of a 24-hour ceasefire

First modification: 06/11/2023 – 19:52

Just 10 minutes after the ceasefire ended, at 6:00 am local time this Sunday, June 11, Khartoum was shaken again by the sound of shelling and armed clashes, witnesses confirmed.

Heavy artillery fire was heard inside Khartoum and fighting broke out on Al-Hawa Street, a major artery in the south of the capital, as well as in the nearby city of Omdurman, north of the city.

The pause in hostilities for one day took place after several failed attempts, with various truces agreed and subsequently broken by both parties to the conflict.

A situation that led Washington to impose sanctions on the generals who lead the two opposing sides, The general Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who heads the Armyand The general Mohamed Hamdanalso known as ‘Hemedti’, who leads the FAR, after the last ceasefire attempt, at the end of May, failed.

The recent nationwide ceasefire was announced by US and Saudi mediators, who warned that the truce must be honored or they would disrupt mediation efforts.

“If the parties do not follow the 24-hour ceasefire, the facilitators will be forced to consider suspending” the talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah, which have been on hold since late May, the mediators said on Saturday June 10.

The mediators added that they “share the frustration of the Sudanese people over the uneven implementation of previous ceasefires.”

The ceasefire that concluded on Sunday morning brought some small relief to residents caught in the midst of hostilities, allowing them to leave their homes and stock up on food and other essential supplies.

Egypt begins to require visas for all Sudanese

Authorities in neighboring Egypt have instituted a new policy requiring all Sudanese to hold visas to enter their territory.

According to Cairo, the measure is necessary after detecting “illegal activities”, including the issuance of fraudulent visas, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid told Reuters.

It is a reversal of a long-standing exemption for children, women and older men from that impoverished country. More than 200,000 people have arrived there since the ongoing conflict broke out.

Fateful fighting has raged in the northeastern African country since mid-April, when the army chief and his former deputy, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (FAR), began to dispute power with weapons after a series of disagreements. The last chapter of the tension between the two sides was caused by a disagreement on the eventual integration of the FAR into the country’s Armed Forces, as part of a transition towards a civil Administration.

Since then, the fighting has left the country submerged in chaos and the protagonist of a massive exodus to neighboring nations, but which see how migration is added to the list of their own problems and instability.

sudan limits to the north with Egypt, to the east with the Red Sea, Eritrea and Ethiopia, to the south with South Sudan and to the west with the Central African Republic, Chad and Libya, nations with great economic difficulties, drought problems, food security and even facing their own armed conflicts for years.

Until last May 17, the spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Matthew Saltmarsh, indicated that at least one million people had been forced to leave their homes due to the conflict. Among them, 843,000 internally displaced, that is, to other towns or cities in their country, and some 250,000 across the borders of Sudan.

But the scale of the exodus is increasing, at a time when there is no immediate end to hostilities in sight.

With AFP and Reuters