Fighting in Khartoum after Sudan’s army declares truce

Heavy firing rang out in Khartoum on Friday after Sudan’s army declared a truce, a Reuters witness said, dealing a blow to international efforts to end almost a week of fighting between its troops and a rival force, a Reuters witness said.

The source of firing was unclear, the witness said, adding air strikes were also heard from time to time.

The army said it agreed to a three-day truce to enable people to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Its adversary, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), said earlier in the day it had agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire, also to mark Eid.

“The armed forces hope that the rebels will abide by all the requirements of the truce and stop any military moves that would obstruct it,” an army statement said.

The army’s evening announcement followed another day of hostilities in Khartoum and the army’s first deployment on foot in the city since the fighting began on Saturday.

Soldiers and gunmen from the RSF shot at each other in neighbourhoods across the city, including during the call for special early morning Eid prayers.

Gunfire crackled without pause all day, punctuated by the thud of artillery and air strikes. Drone footage showed several plumes of smoke across Khartoum and its Nile sister cities, together one of Africa’s biggest urban areas.

The fighting has killed hundreds, mainly in the capital and the west of Sudan, tipping the continent’s third-largest country – where about a quarter of people already relied on food aid – into a humanitarian disaster.

With the airport caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Spain have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said without elaborating that one U.S. citizen in Sudan had been killed. The White House said no decision yet had been made to evacuate American diplomatic personnel but the U.S. was preparing for such an eventuality if it became necessary.

Reuters reported on Thursday that the United States was sending a large number of additional troops to its base in Djibouti in case of an eventual evacuation from Sudan.

At least five aid workers have been killed, including three from the World Food Programme, which has since suspended its Sudan operation – one of the world’s largest food aid missions.

A worker at the International Organization for Migration was killed in the city of El Obeid on Friday, after his vehicle was hit by crossfire as he tried to move his family to safety.

The army has pressed forward, fighting the RSF on the ground after having previously stuck largely to air strikes and artillery shelling across the capital since the power struggle erupted last weekend.

In a statement, the army said it had begun “the gradual cleaning of hotbeds of rebel groups around the capital”.