FIGHTING CONTINUES IN SUDAN DESPITE EID AL-FITR TRUCE

Sat 22 Apr 2023:

Fighting continued in Khartoum on Friday despite Sudan’s army saying it had agreed to a three-day truce with the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to enable people to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The RSF said earlier in the day that it had agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire to mark Eid.

Fighting had eased in some parts of the city on Friday evening, witnesses reported, according to the French news agency AFP.

Khartoum-based journalist and analyst Mohamed Alamin Ahmed told Al Jazeera that there had been a lull in the conflict during Friday night but that it did not amount to a truce.

Evacuation

With the airport in Khartoum caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain and the US have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.

Other countries and the United Nations are also looking at how they can evacuate citizens and employees.

The UN has been trying to extract staff from “very dangerous” zones in Sudan to move them to safer locations, Abdou Dieng, the top UN aid official in Sudan, said on Thursday. Dieng said he had been moved to a safer area on Wednesday.

The UN has about 4,000 staff in Sudan, 800 of which are international staff.

Switzerland said on Friday it was examining ways to evacuate nationals from Sudan and Sweden said it will evacuate embassy staff as well as families as soon as possible. Spanish military aircraft are on standby and ready to evacuate some 60 Spanish nationals and others from Khartoum, while South Korea sent a military aircraft to stand by at a US military base in Djibouti to evacuate its nationals when possible.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said 413 people had been killed and 3,551 wounded in the fighting across Sudan so far, though the actual death toll is thought to be higher, with many wounded unable to reach hospitals.

The International Committee of the Red Cross urged “immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access”, saying it was a “legal obligation under international humanitarian law”.

Analysts have warned that the conflict could affect countries across the region, with the UN saying up to 20,000 people have already fled to neighbouring Chad.

Millions more into hunger

The unrest in Sudan has the potential to plunge millions more into hunger, the World Food Programme (WFP) said Thursday as it has been forced to temporarily cease operations, reports Anadolu Agency.

“Record numbers of people were already facing hunger in Sudan before the conflict erupted on April 15. In 2023, WFP planned to support more than 7.6 million people,” it said in a statement.

“The ongoing fighting is preventing WFP from delivering critical emergency food, providing school meals for children, or preventing and treating malnutrition.”

Meanwhile, the UN Humanitarian Air Service managed by WFP on behalf of the international community has been completely grounded. One aircraft has been damaged beyond repair and at least 10 vehicles and six food trucks have been stolen, it said.

WFP guesthouses, offices, and warehouses in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state have been overrun and looted, with the loss of up to 4,000 metric tons of food for hungry people, it added.

The agency “calls on all parties to the conflict to take immediate steps to guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers and to protect humanitarian assets and premises in Sudan,” it said.

“WFP urges all parties to put an end to the fighting and come to an agreement that enables the continued delivery of vital food and humanitarian assistance.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

______________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent