KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) – Sudan’s military on Thursday ruled out negotiations with a rival paramilitary force, saying it would only accept its surrender while the two sides continued to fight in central Khartoum and other parts of the country, threatening to destroy the international attempts to negotiate a longer ceasefire.
A tenuous 24-hour ceasefire that began the previous day ran out Thursday evening with no word of an extension. The military’s statement raised the likelihood of a further escalation in the nearly week-long violence that has killed hundreds and pushed Sudan’s population to breaking point. Alarm grew that the country’s medical system was on the verge of collapse, with many hospitals forced to close and others without supplies.
The truce had failed to stop fighting throughout the day and brought only marginal calm to parts of the capital, Khartoum. But many residents took the opportunity to escape from the houses where they have been trapped for days. “Massive numbers” of people, mostly women and children, were leaving in search of safer areas, said Atiya Abdulla Atiya, secretary of the Doctors Union.
On Thursday afternoon, the army said in a statement that it would not negotiate with its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, and would only discuss the terms of its surrender. “There would be no armed forces outside (the) military system,” he said.
The collapse of the truce, the second attempt this week, highlighted the failure of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and regional powers to push Sudan’s top generals to halt their campaigns to seize the control of the country Instead, army chief General Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo appear determined to win an outright military victory over the other.
In a sign they expect the violence to escalate, the United States and other countries were making preparations to evacuate their citizens to Sudan, a difficult prospect as most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out from Khartoum to safer areas is dangerous.
The US military is moving assets to a base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti for a possible evacuation of US embassy personnel, administration officials said. Japan plans to send military planes to Djibouti, and the Netherlands has sent its own to Jordan.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on the fighters to commit to a three-day ceasefire to coincide with the Eid al-Fitr holiday, starting Friday, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan “We are living a very important moment in the Muslim calendar. I think this is the right time to maintain a ceasefire,” he told reporters.
But direct communications with rival generals by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Turkish president and others over the past few days have so far failed to secure even 24 hours of calm, let alone a truce. longer or negotiations to resolve the crisis. Each side’s main regional allies, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have called for talks to no avail.
At least 330 people have been killed and 3,300 injured in the fighting since it began on Saturday, the World Health Organization said, but the number is likely to be higher because many bodies lie uncollected in the streets.
Throughout the day on Thursday, constant gunfire could be heard in Khartoum. Residents reported the heaviest fighting around the main military headquarters in central Khartoum. Residents said military warplanes attacked RSF positions at the airport and in the neighboring town of Omdurman. The military said its warplanes also hit a convoy of RSF vehicles heading to the capital, although the claim could not be independently confirmed.
Residents of Khartoum have been desperate for respite after days of being trapped in their homes, without food or water.
Aid groups have been unable to provide aid to Sudan’s overwhelmed hospitals, Atiya said. Hospitals in Khartoum are running dangerously low on medical supplies, often operating without electricity and clean water. About 70 percent of hospitals across the country are out of service because of the fighting, the Sudanese Doctors Union said, adding that at least nine hospitals were shelled.
The two sides are also fighting elsewhere in the country, and there were reports of heavy fighting in the town of Obeid, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum.
The Doctors Union said at least 26 civilians and 17 policemen were killed in Obeid and that four hospitals and a church were damaged, some by airstrikes. Two markets were looted and more than 3,300 people fled their homes, many of whom took refuge in a school and sports facility, he said.
The fighting has been disastrous for a country where the United Nations says around a third of the population, some 16 million people, are in need of humanitarian aid. The UN children’s agency UNICEF warned that critical care has been interrupted for 50,000 children with severe acute malnutrition, who need round-the-clock treatment.
Save the Children said power cuts across the country have destroyed cold chain storage facilities for life-saving vaccines, as well as the national stock of insulin and several antibiotics. Millions of children, the aid group said, are now at risk of disease and further health complications. He said 12% of the country’s 22 million children suffer from malnutrition and are vulnerable to other diseases.
Egyptian and Sudanese militaries said Egypt managed to repatriate dozens of its servicemen who had been detained by RSF when it attacked Merowe airport, north of the capital, earlier in the fighting. Egypt said its personnel were there for joint training and exercises.
The conflict has again derailed Sudan’s attempt to establish a democratic government after a popular uprising helped oust autocrat Omar al-Bashir four years ago. Burhan and Dagalo jointly staged a coup by purging civilians from a transitional government in 2021.
The explosion of violence came after weeks of rising tensions between the two generals over a renewed international push to return to civilian rule.
Both sides have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to quell a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.
The conflict has raised fears of a spillover from the strategically located nation to its African neighbors.
Fighting in Sudan has prompted up to 20,000 Sudanese to seek refuge in eastern Chad, the UN said on Thursday. At least 320 Sudanese soldiers fled to Chad, where they were disarmed, said Daoud Yaya Brahim, Chad’s defense minister. The troops were apparently fleeing Darfur, where the RSF is the most powerful armed force.
“Chad is currently trying to remain neutral… (but) Chad will be forced to choose sides if Sudan continues its descent into civil war,” said Benjamin Hunger, Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. a risk assessment company. ___ Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press correspondent Fay Abuelgasim in Beirut contributed to this report.
