Fighting and explosions continue in Sudan’s capital and a southern city. Pre-negotiation talks between the army and paramilitary forces have yielded no progress. The UN has proposed a declaration of commitments for the safe passage of humanitarian relief.
Fighting raged in the Sudanese capital and a city to the south Wednesday, residents said, pushing more people to undertake dangerous journeys to safety across the country’s borders.
Those unable to escape grapple with shortages of food and other essentials, surviving only thanks to Sudanese charity networks among friends and neighbours, as talks to secure the safe delivery of aid yield no noticeable progress.
During the night, two huge blasts were heard across greater Khartoum, residents of multiple districts said, in the fourth week of battles between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
In El Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital, about 350 kilometres (190 miles) southwest of Khartoum, residents on Wednesday also reported fighting and explosions.
More than 700,000 people are now internally displaced by battles that began on April 15, and another 150,000 have fled the country, UN agencies said this week.
An average of 1,000 are registered every day by the International Organization for Migration at the dusty, sun-scorched Ethiopian border town of Metema.
The United States and Saudi Arabia said the army and RSF would hold “pre-negotiation talks” in the Saudi city of Jeddah from last Saturday, but there has been no announcement of progress there.
Martin Griffiths, the top UN aid official, has left Jeddah after he “proposed a declaration of commitments for the two parties to guarantee the safe passage of humanitarian relief,” a UN spokesman in New York said on Tuesday.
Marie de La Roche Saint-André, with AFP
