Fierce fighting continued in Sudanaffected by a humanitarian catastrophe, but the neighbor South Sudan said on Tuesday it had reached an “agreement in principle” between the two warring generals. for a one week truce.
“Firefights, military planes and anti-aircraft shots are heard,” he informs the news agency AFP a Khartoum inhabitant, when a previous truce, officially in force but violated from the start, ends Wednesday at midnight.
Army leaders and warring paramilitary forces in Sudan agreed to a seven-day truce from May 4-11 in a telephone interview with the South Sudanese president Save Kiirthe South Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Tuesday.
“The general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (…) and the general Mohamed Hamdane Daglo (…) they agreed in principle to a seven-day truce from May 4 to 11,” the ministry announced in a statement.
Both “gave their agreement (…) to the appointment of representatives to carry out peace negotiations that must be held in the place they choose,” the statement said.
None of the previous truces was respected by the belligerents.
The fighting, which began on April 15, has caused more than 500 deadmainly in Khartoum and Darfur (west), and thousands of wounded, according to a widely underestimated balance.
The conflict plunged the country, one of the poorest in the world, into a “true catastrophe”, according to the UN.
More of 330,000 people were displaced and another 100,000 went to neighboring countries, according to the UN, which estimates there will be eight times as many refugees.
Those who remain suffer from a lack of water, electricity and food in Khartoum, one of the hottest cities in the world.
Sudan is mired in conflict since April 15 when a war broke out for power between the head of the army, General Abdel Fatah al Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (FAR), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
A senior UN official in Sudan, Abdou Diengwarned Monday that the situation is heading for a “full-fledged catastrophe.”
The President of Kenya, william rutoHe said the conflict has reached “catastrophic levels” and that the warring generals refuse “to heed the calls of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union and the international community for a ceasefire.”
In a virtual meeting with senior UN officials, Ruto said it was imperative to find ways to send humanitarian aid “with or without a ceasefire.”
Burhan and Daglo, who are now rivals, they allied in a coup in 2021 to marginalize civilians from the government after the overthrow of the dictator Omar al-Bashirwhich halted the transition in the country.
Both sides they have broken several trucesthe latest a 72-hour ceasefire agreed late on Sunday.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the aid program for Sudan for 2023 is only 14% financed and that there is a lack of 1.5 billion dollars to face the humanitarian crisis, aggravated by the fighting .
The UN humanitarian officer Martin Griffithsarrived in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Monday on a mission to find ways to send aid to the millions of civilians trapped in Sudan.
The chaos of the conflict included the bombing of hospitals and looting of humanitarian facilities, forcing foreign organizations to suspend most of their operations.
UNHCR fears that “more than 800,000 people” will flee the fighting to neighboring countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the fighting weighed down the country’s health system, which was already extremely fragile, pushing it towards a “catastrophe” and that in the capital only 16% of hospitals operate at full capacity.
Chaos also engulfed the capital of West Darfur state, Geneina, where at least 96 people have been reported dead since fighting began, according to the UN.
The Darfur region is still heavily scarred by the war that began in 2003 when the dictator Al Bashir recruited the militias of “Janjaweed” against ethnic minority rebels.
This war, which included a scorched earth campaign, left nearly 300,000 dead and nearly 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures.
(With information from AFP)
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Source-www.infobae.com