Ceasefire Begins After Fighting In Sudan Kills Nearly 200

The fourth day of intense fighting reportedly saw the implementation of a 24-hour ceasefire negotiated between Sudan’s warring generals.

The truce, which was to start on Tuesday at 6 p.m. local time, was announced by a number of Arab media outlets, although there had been fierce fighting up until that point, making it uncertain whether it would last.

Residents reported hearing gunshots and explosions in several areas of Khartoum, especially in the vicinity of the military’s headquarters and the Republican Palace, which serves as the capital. Although there were large crowds outside certain bakeries, they claimed that few people had walked outside.

“The fighting remains underway,” Atiya Abdulla Atiya of the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate told The Associated Press. “We are hearing constant gunfire.”

Tens of thousands of soldiers, many of them heavily armed, have been fighting since Saturday throughout Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum and other parts of the country. At least 185 people have died as a result of the violence, and hundreds more have been hurt. The third-largest country in Africa now faces the possibility of civil war.

Millions of Sudanese have been sheltering in their houses in the capital and other major cities while the two groups fight for control, with rival generals so far adamant they would crush the other. According to reports on the satellite networks Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, the military would abide by the ceasefire, according to top military officer Shams El Din Kabbashi.

Earlier, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, the leader of the nation’s military, was quoted by CNN Arabic as saying that the military would participate in the day-long ceasefire. The development happened a day after a US Embassy convoy came under fire and two competing factions’ soldiers engaged in a fourth day of heavy weaponry exchanges.

The assault on the convoy in Khartoum, together with an attack on the apartment of the EU representative and bombardment of the residence of the Norwegian ambassador, signaled a further escalation of the instability in the nation.

Preliminary indications connected the attackers to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group battling Sudan’s military, US secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters. The attack on the convoy of prominently marked US Embassy cars occurred on Monday. He said that everyone in the convoy was safe.

UN numbers, which did not differentiate between civilians and fighters, show that since fighting started on Saturday, more than 185 people have died and more than 1,800 have been injured. According to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, at least 144 civilians were murdered and more than 1,400 were injured on Tuesday.

Conflicts in Khartoum have made it difficult to remove some dead, therefore the actual death toll may be substantially higher.

Late on Monday, the State Department confirmed that Mr. Blinken had telephone conversations with the two opposing generals, General Burhan, head of the armed forces, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the RSF.

At the Tuesday summit of the Group of Seven affluent nations in Japan, Mr. Blinken told reporters, “I made very clear that any attacks, threats, or hazards posed to our ambassadors were utterly unacceptable. In order to provide the groundwork for a lengthier ceasefire and a restart of talks, he pleaded for an immediate 24-hour ceasefire.

After communicating with Mr. Blinken, General Dagalo claimed in a series of tweets on Tuesday that he had approved a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire.