Clashes resume in Sudan as 24-hour ceasefire ends

AFP | Stockholm

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com    

Shelling and gunfire resumed yesterday in the Sudanese capital, witnesses said, after the end of a 24-hour ceasefire that had given civilians rare respite from nearly two months of war.

Deadly fighting has raged in the northeast African country since mid-April, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), turned on each other.

The latest in a series of ceasefire agreements enabled civilians trapped in the capital Khartoum to venture outside and stock up on food and other essential supplies.

But only 10 minutes after it ended at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) on Sunday the capital was rocked again by shelling and clashes, witnesses told AFP.

Heavy artillery fire was heard in Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman to the north, and fighting also erupted on Al-Hawa Street, a major artery in the south of the capital, they said.

The one-day lull was “like a dream” that evaporated, said Nasreddin Ahmed, a resident of south Khartoum who was awoken by the fighting.

Asmaa al-Rih, who lives in the capital’s northern suburbs, lamented the “return of terror” with “rockets and shells shaking the walls of houses” once again.

Clouds of smoke were also seen billowing for a fifth successive day from the Al-Shajara oil and gas facility near the Yarmouk military plant in Khartoum.

Multiple truces have been agreed and broken, including even after the United States had slapped sanctions on both rival generals after the previous attempt collapsed at the end of May.

Both Burhan and Daglo amassed considerable wealth during the rule of longtime Sudanese dictator Omar alBashir, whose government was subjected to decades of international sanctions before his overthrow in 2019.