Air strikes instead of ceasefire on Islamic holiday

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The Sudanese army air force fired on targets in the center and north of the city and in the neighboring town of Omdurman. The attacks again took place in the immediate vicinity of densely populated residential areas. The fighting has been going on for almost a week now. The international community has been pushing for a humanitarian ceasefire for days, which has so far always been thwarted.

Several countries tried to evacuate their nationals from the Sudanese capital. The German army was preparing for another attempt to evacuate Germans, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Friday when asked by the German news agency. On Wednesday, an attempted diplomatic evacuation with air force planes, but without major military deployment, was canceled because the security situation in the besieged capital was too dangerous for such an operation.

The airport in the capital has been at the center of hostilities since the start of the conflict. Diplomats fight for a resilient ceasefire for the evacuation.

The US government has also announced that the US military is preparing to evacuate embassy personnel. A decision has not yet been made, National Security Council communications director John Kirby said Thursday afternoon (local time) in Washington. The US State Department had previously confirmed the death of an American in Sudan.

Heavy fighting between the army and paramilitaries also continued in the rest of the northeastern African country, despite the start of celebrations to mark the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. At least 413 people have been killed and more than 3,500 injured in the fighting since last weekend, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Numerous health facilities should have been closed. Sudanese Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim spoke on Friday about “a very large number of dead bodies in the streets”.

International mediators had pushed for a ceasefire over the holiday that began Friday at the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. A ceasefire from Friday morning (06:00 CEST), agreed by the paramilitary unit Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had not been confirmed by the Sudanese army.

Instead, residents of Khartoum, who had been locked in their homes for seven days, reported an intensification of fighting. “The lyrical sound of the extended Eid prayer is interrupted by the grotesque staccato of bombing/gunfire. All hope that the Sudanese generals could grant a humanitarian reprieve for this holy day has been dashed,” Sudanese Kholood Khair wrote on Twitter.

In the Northeast African country, which has been politically unstable for years, de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander-in-chief of the army, is fighting with his troops against his deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, the leader of the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and are units for supremacy. The two men have led the gold- and oil-rich country of about 46 million people since a joint military coup in 2019 and another in 2021.

According to the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, another United Nations employee was killed in the fighting on Friday. The accident happened in Obeid, nearly 400 kilometers southwest of the capital Khartoum. Three World Food Program employees were killed in North Dafur on Saturday. The organization then stopped its work in Sudan for security reasons.

(SDA)

Source: Blick