Sudan fighting live news: Battles ongoing despite ceasefire

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Fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has entered a third week, with air strikes and artillery causing dark smoke over the capital, Khartoum, and adjacent cities of Bahri and Ombdurman.
Battles rage despite the announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire extension on Friday.
At least 512 people have been killed and nearly 4,200 wounded since the fighting began on April 15.
The violence has reawakened a decades-old conflict in Sudan’s West Darfur region where at least 70 people have died.

Army says it ‘thwarted attempt by RSF to seize power’

Sudan’s army says it has thwarted a failed attempt by the RSF to seize power.

“All attempts by the rebels and their agents from inside and outside the country to market their project that is based on deceiving people and falsifying facts had failed,” the army said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement added that the army is “working to create the appropriate conditions so that state agencies can resume their work and life can return to normal as soon as possible.”

African Union Commission chief ‘ready to travel to Khartoum’

African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat says the regional body is working with the international community to “use one voice” on the conflict in Sudan.

“The objective is to coordinate the international community’s position on Sudan … we want the international community to use one voice on this issue,” he said at the Ibrahim Governance Weekend in Nairobi.

Mahamat said the proposed solution would be a “Sudanese-led process supported by the region, by the continental organisation and all partners”.

Speaking to reporters at the regional event, Mahamat said he is “ready to travel to Khartoum, and have asked the two generals [army and RSF leaders] to create the conditions for us to go to Khartoum immediately”.

Deadline passes for evacuation of British nationals

The deadline for British nationals to reach the evacuation airfield in Sudan has passed as the government prepares to cease flights out of the war-torn region within hours.

British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will chair a meeting of the COBRA national emergency committee on Saturday afternoon to
discuss the security situation in Khartoum in advance of the final flight taking off at 6pm British time (17:00 GMT).

Some 1,573 people on 13 flights have been evacuated from the Wadi Saeedna site near the capital but thousands more British citizens may
remain.

The information war in Sudan

Khartoum looks like a war zone these days as two generals and their armies fight for control of Sudan. Both are pushing their narratives on social media and jostling for command of the state-run airwaves.

The Listening Post looks at the information war in Sudan.

Aid agencies running out of food for refugees

Two weeks since refugees began arriving in Chad and South Sudan, aid agencies say they are running out of food for them.

The UN has said it is expecting up to 270,000 people to leave Sudan for its neighbouring countries.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris says there has been a marked presence of local and international aid agencies since the arrival of refugees from Sudan, but hundreds of refugees remain without access to food and non-food aid from these agencies.

“Most of the refugees are living out in the open in the Koufron refugee camp in Chad, where not a single tent can be found,” Idris said.

As more refugees continue to enter the eastern part of Chad, the state of camps remains “desperate”, he said.

Rivals risk international isolation, UN envoy tells Al Jazeera

The United Nations special representative for Sudan, Volker Perthes, has told Al Jazeera that if rival sides refuse to negotiate, they risk international isolation.

“Regional countries and the international community must say that even if one side wins the fight that side would not be accepted internationally,” he said.

“Similarly, if a side refuses negotiations and reconciliation, it will not be accepted internationally, regionally, or even nationally.”

Ship carrying 1,900 evacuees arrives in Jeddah

A ship carrying about 1,900 people from Sudan has arrived in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah.

The vessel set off from Port Sudan and docked at the King Faisal Naval Base in Jeddah after crossing the Red Sea, in the latest sea evacuation to the kingdom.

Sudan army chief: ‘No negotiations with militia groups’

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan reports the two warring sides do not appear close to meeting each other despite efforts by the international community to get them to adhere to a ceasefire and hold talks to end two weeks of heavy fighting.

“The Sudanese army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, spoke to a US public broadcaster on Friday and said there will be no negotiations with the militia groups, while referring to the RSF,” Morgan reported from Khartoum.

Rapid Support Forces chief General Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo has said he is willing to negotiate once a ceasefire takes hold and the army stops attacks.

The army agreed to send an envoy to South Sudan’s capital Juba for talks with the RSF, but it was a tentative agreement and “it doesn’t look like it will happen”, Morgan said.

The army has deployed fighter jets and drones to strike Rapid Support Forces (RSF) positions in areas across the capital. Many residents are pinned down by urban warfare with scant water, food, fuel, and power.

RSF accused the army of violating the latest ceasefire with air strikes on its bases in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers, and Mount Awliya.

The army blamed RSF for truce violations.

Fighting enters third week as both sides ignore ceasefire

The sounds of air strikes, anti-aircraft weaponry, and artillery could be heard in Khartoum and dark smoke rose over parts of the city as fighting in Sudan entered a third week.

Despite the announcement of a 72-hour ceasefire extension, fighting between the army and its rival paramilitary force was also ongoing in the nearby cities of Bahri and Ombdurman.

Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have fled for their lives in a power struggle between generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo of the Rapid Support Forces erupted into violence on April 15.

Source:-Aljazeera