US says Sudanese rivals agree to extend cease-fire
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — The U.S. secretary of state says the rival generals in Sudan have agreed to extend a shaky cease-fire for another three days as foreign nations continue to evacuate their nationals from the country.
Antony Blinken announced the agreement late Monday.
The warring sides have largely ignored a series of declared cease-fires, but the most recent, which coincided with a Muslim holiday, helped facilitate the evacuation of thousands of people from the capital, Khartoum. That truce expired Monday.
As foreign governments airlifted hundreds of their diplomats and other citizens to safety, Sudanese on Monday desperately sought ways to escape the chaos, fearing that the country’s two rival generals will escalate their all-out battle for power once evacuations are completed.
In dramatic evacuation operations, convoys of foreign diplomats, civilian teachers, students, workers and families from dozens of countries wound past combatants at tense front lines in the capital of Khartoum to reach extraction points. Others drove hundreds of miles to the country’s east coast. A stream of European, Mideast, African and Asian military aircraft flew in all day Sunday and Monday to ferry them out.
But for many Sudanese, the airlift was a terrifying sign that international powers, after failing repeatedly to broker cease-fires, only expect a worsening of the fighting that has already pushed the population into disaster. The latest nominal cease-fire, which brought almost no reduction in fighting, was due to run out Monday evening.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “catastrophic conflagration”
that could engulf the whole region. He urged the 15 members of the Security Council to “exert maximum leverage” on both sides in order to “pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss.” Sudanese face a harrowing search for safety in the constantly shifting battle of explosions, gunfire and armed fighters looting shops and homes. Many have been huddling in their homes for nine days. Food and fuel are leaping in price and harder to find, electricity and internet are cut off in much of the country, and hospitals are near collapse. Those who can afford it were making the 15-hour long drive to the Egyptian border or to Port
Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Those without means to get abroad streamed out to relatively calmer provinces along the Nile north and south of Khartoum. Many more were trapped, with cash in short supply and transport costs spiraling. “Traveling out of Khartoum has become a luxury,” said Shahin al-Sherif, a high school teacher. The 27-yearold al-Sherif was frantically trying to arrange transport out of Khartoum for himself, his younger sister, mother, aunt and grandmother. They had been trapped for days in their home in Khartoum’s Amarat neighborhood while fighting raged outside. Finally, they moved to a safer district farther
out. But al-Sherif expects things to get worse and worries his sister, aunt and grandmother, all diabetic, won’t be able to get the supplies they need. Bus ticket prices have more than quadrupled so that renting a bus for 50 people to get to the Egyptian border costs around $14,000, he said.
Amani el-Taweel, an Egyptian expert on Africa, warned of “horrific suffering” for Sudanese unable to leave. In a country where a third of the population already needed humanitarian aid, aid agencies can no longer reach most Sudanese because of the clashes. Once evacuations are complete, “warring parties will not heed any calls for a truce or a
cease-fire,” she said.
Heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rocked the city in continued fighting between the military and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. In the afternoon, intensified airstrikes hammered Khartoum’s Nile-side Kalakla district for an hour until the area was “razed to the ground,” said Atiya Abdulla Atiya, secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate. The bombardment sent dozens of wounded to the Turkish Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning, he said. Egypt meanwhile denied that any of its diplomats had been harmed after the Sudanese military claimed that an assistant to the Egyptian military attache was killed in an attack. Cairo, which has close ties to the Sudanese army, has joined calls for a cease-fire.
Over 420 people, including at least 273 civilians, have been killed and over 3,700 wounded since the fighting began April 15. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in fighting in Khartoum but the RSF still controls many districts in the capital and the neighboring city of Omdurman, and has several large strongholds around the country. With the military vowing to fight until the RSF is crushed, many fear a dramatic escalation. For foreign nationals, the need to abandon Khartoum had become overwhelming by the seventh day of the conflict. Khartoum’s wealthy neighborhoods, where most foreigners live, saw some of the heaviest shelling and drone strikes, and several fell under RSF control.
Alice Lehtinen, a British teacher living in the Khartoum Two neighborhood, was shot in the foot by a stray bullet on the first day of fighting. Soon after, RSF troops occupied the lower floor of her apartment building as they combed the streets for weapons, dollars and other supplies, she said. The Sudanese pound has become worthless as shops lay smashed and looted.
Another British teacher, Elizabeth Boughey, said the RSF broke into her house and stole her Sudanese pounds, then returned soon after to hand the money back. They looked like teenagers she said.
The United States said Monday that it has begun facilitating the departure of private U.S. citizens after swooping in to extract diplomats on Sunday. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. has placed intelligence and reconnaissance assets over the evacuation route from Khartoum to Port Sudan but does not have any U.S. troops on the ground.