Saudi Arabia and the United States announced Monday in a joint statement the extension for five days of a truce, theoretically started a week ago but in reality never applied, to "allow more humanitarian efforts", while 25 of the 45 million Sudanese need humanitarian aid to survive.
The war launched on April 15 between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane's army and the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left more than 1,800 dead and nearly one and a half million displaced and refugees. Gunfire was still heard in Khartoum on Monday night, residents said, while the RSF accused the army of carrying out deadly air raids during the day. As usual, the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo accused each other of attacking, assuring that they were only responding to assaults. The RSF accused the army of carrying out a deadly airstrike in Khartoum on Monday.
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Washington and Riyadh, for their part, note every day "new violations of the ceasefire" but without ever activating the "sanctions" or the "monitoring mechanism" they said they were putting in place when the first truce was announced. Since its start on 22 May, families have been able to get out quickly to buy food or drink, for twice as much as before the war.
But thousands more continue to hide in their homes, many without running water or electricity, for fear of stray bullets. Humanitarians have only been able to deliver small quantities of food or medicine because their staff cannot move because of the fighting and their airborne cargo is still stuck at customs, they say. The situation is worse in Darfur, a vast region on the western border with Chad, already ravaged by war in the 2000s, according to Toby Harward of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
