Sudanese refugees mass at Eqyptian borders to escape fighting

Sudanese families are massing at a border crossing with Egypt and at a main port, desperately trying to escape their country’s violence and sometimes waiting for days with little food or shelter, witnesses said.

In the capital, Khartoum, the intensity of fighting eased on the second day of a three-day truce.

The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire beginning on Tuesday after negotiations mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia.

Taking advantage of relative calm, many residents in Khartoum and the neighbouring city of Omdurman emerged from their homes to seek food and water, lining up at bakeries or grocery stores, after days of being trapped inside by the fighting between the army and a rival paramilitary group.

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“There is a sense of calm in my area and neighbourhoods,” said Mahasen Ali, a tea vendor who lives in south Khartoum. “But all are afraid of what’s next.”

Still, gunfire and explosions could be heard in the city, though residents said clashes were in more limited pockets, mainly around the military’s headquarters and the Republican Palace in central Khartoum and around bases in Omdurman across the Nile River.

With the future of any truce uncertain, many took the opportunity to join the tens of thousands who have streamed out of the capital in recent days, trying to get out of the crossfire between the forces of Sudan’s two top generals.

The Sudanese armed forces are broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler, while the paramilitaries of the RSF, a collection of militia, follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The generals’ war for power since April 15th has pushed the population to a near breaking point. Food has grown more difficult to obtain, electricity is cut off across much of the capital and other cities, and many hospitals have shut down.

Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations, a heavy blow in a country where a third of the population of 46 million relies on humanitarian assistance.

Many Sudanese fear the warring sides will escalate their battle once the international evacuations of foreigners that began on Sunday is completed.

The British government, whose airlift is one of the last still ongoing, said it has evacuated around 300 people on flights out and plans four more on Wednesday, promising to keep going as long as possible.

Large numbers of people have meanwhile been making the exhausting 15-hour drive across the desert to access points out of the country — to the city of Port Sudan on the eastern Red Sea coast and to the Arqin crossing into Egypt at the northern border.

Large crowds of Sudanese and foreigners waited in Port Sudan, trying to register for a ferry to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it evacuated 1,674 people from 56 countries – as well as 13 of its own citizens, from Sudan.

Tens of thousands of Khartoum residents have also fled to neighbouring provinces or even into already existing displacement and refugee camps within Sudan that house victims of past conflicts.

At least 512 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed since the fighting erupted, with another 4,200 wounded, the Sudanese Health Ministry said.

The 72-hour cease-fire announced by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to last until late Thursday.

Meanwhile, Sudan’s toppled leader Omar al-Bashir was moved from Kober prison to a military hospital in the capital Khartoum before heavy fighting broke out there on April 15th, two sources at the hospital said.

The whereabouts of the former dictator came into question after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, announced on Tuesday he had left the prison with other former officials. Both Bashir and Haroun are wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged atrocities in Darfur. AP/Reuters

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