Fighting and artillery fire continue to rage in Khartoum. Still, the Saudi and U.S. mediators welcomed the five-day extension of a truce that has never been respected. It is supposed to deliver life-saving humanitarian aid to Sudan's brink of famine.

As usual, the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo accused each other of attacking, assuring that they were only responding to assaults. The RSF accused the army of carrying out a deadly airstrike in Khartoum on Monday.

Washington and Riyadh, for their part, note every day "new violations of the ceasefire" but without ever activating the "sanctions" or the "monitoring mechanism" they said they were in place when the first truce was announced. Humanitarians have only been able to deliver small quantities of food or medicine because their staff cannot move because of the fighting and their airborne cargo is still stuck at customs, they say.

Civilian casualties in Darfur

The situation is worse in Darfur, a vast region on the western border with Chad, already ravaged by war in the 2000s, according to Toby Harward of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "Sporadic fighting between soldiers and paramilitaries in recent days in El-Fasher, Northern Darfur, up to the Abu Shuk camp for internally displaced persons, has resulted in civilian casualties," he said.

Homes have been looted and tens of thousands of people have been displaced again by the fighting, which is "a flagrant violation of the ceasefire and prevents the distribution of humanitarian aid", he added. In East Darfur, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), "about thirty newborns have died in a hospital since the beginning of the fighting, including six the same week for lack of oxygen during power cuts".

Since the beginning of the war on April 15, more than 1,800 people have been killed, according to the NGO ACLED. More than a million others have been forced to move elsewhere in Sudan and nearly 350,000 outside the country, according to the UN.

Risk of all-out civil war

Yassir Arman, a leader of the bloc demanding civilian rule, the Forces of Freedom and Change (FLC), accused supporters of the ousted dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir of seeking "to exacerbate ethnic differences" to plunge the country into chaos and for the people to demand their return. The FLC also warned against calls for "an all-out civil war," calling on both sides to follow the African Union's (AU) crisis exit plan.

The latter said on Saturday that it was ready to implement a roadmap in Sudan and the Europeans gave it their support. Washington has said it supports the initiative, but with every jolt in Sudan, the Americans and Saudis conduct a diplomatic process parallel to regional efforts. Truce or not, a new danger will remain: more and more unexploded projectiles litter roads and even buildings, the UN has warned.

  • Sudan
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  • Khartoum
  • Conflict