After over a week of violence between its forces and a rival paramilitary organisation, the Sudanese army said on Friday that it has agreed to a three-day truce beginning on Saturday to allow civilians to enjoy the Muslim festival of Eid Al-Fitr.
“The Armed Forces expect that the rebels would follow all the requisists of the truce and cease any military moves that would obstruct it,” reads a statement released by the military.
Earlier in the day, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire.
After the army moved on foot for the first time in over a week’s worth of fighting with the RSF, gunfire ripped through civilian neighbourhoods in the capital city of Khartoum.
During the early morning call to Eid prayers, as well as in other parts of the city, soldiers and RSF militants exchanged fire.
When exactly the ceasefire will go into effect was unclear. The day was broken by the thud of artillery and air attacks and the crackling of gunfire. Drone footage of one of Africa’s largest towns, Khartoum, and its Nile River neighbours, showed many smoke plumes.
The conflict has killed hundreds, mostly in the capital and the west of Sudan, and has turned the third-largest country on the continent into a humanitarian crisis, where almost a quarter of the population already relied on food help.
Nations such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Spain were unable to evacuate diplomatic personnel due to the inaccessibility of the airport and the instability of the airspace.
The US State Department in Washington revealed the death of an American in Sudan without providing any details. The White House has stated that no decision about the evacuation of American diplomatic staff has been taken at this time, but that the United States is ready for such an eventuality.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that the United States was preparing for a possible withdrawal from Sudan by deploying a substantial number of extra troops to its base in Djibouti.
Three World Food Programme employees were among the five dead charity workers, prompting the organisation to halt its massive food supply mission in Sudan.
Friday in the city of El Obeid, an International Organisation for Migration employee was murdered after his truck was caught in crossfire as he attempted to evacuate his family.
After mostly relying on air strikes and artillery fire around the capital since the power struggle began last Saturday, the army has pushed forward, engaging the RSF on the ground.
The army said in a statement that it has started “the gradual cleaning of hotbeds of rebel groups around the capital.”
