Tue | Oct 7, 2025

Fighters rampage in Darfur city despite Sudan truce

Published:Friday | April 28, 2023 | 12:56 AM
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In this image, provided by the UK Ministry of Defence, on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, British nationals seen here onboard an RAF aircraft in Akrotiri, Cyprus, after being evacuated from Sudan. On planes and warships, world powers evacuated more people from
PO Phot Aaron Hoare
In this image, provided by the UK Ministry of Defence, on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, British nationals seen here onboard an RAF aircraft in Akrotiri, Cyprus, after being evacuated from Sudan. On planes and warships, world powers evacuated more people from Sudan on Wednesday in complex international operations prompted by an eruption of fighting that has sent thousands of foreigners and many more Sudanese people fleeing for safety.
A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Sudan's warring generals have pledged to observe a new three-day truce that was brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia to try to pull Africa's third-largest
AP
A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Sudan's warring generals have pledged to observe a new three-day truce that was brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia to try to pull Africa's third-largest nation from the abyss.
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CAIRO (AP):

Armed fighters rampaged through a main city in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur on Thursday, battling each other and looting shops and homes, residents said. The violence came despite a fragile three-day truce between Sudan’s two top generals, whose power struggle has killed hundreds.

The mayhem in the Darfur city of Genena pointed to how the rival generals’ fight for control in the capital, Khartoum, was spiraling into violence in other parts of Sudan.

The ceasefire has brought a significant easing of fighting in Khartoum and its neighbouring city Omdurman for the first time since the military and a rival paramilitary force began clashing on April 15. The fighting had turned residential neighborhoods into battlegrounds.

The relative calm has allowed foreign governments to airlift out hundreds of citizens, while tens of thousands of Sudanese have streamed out of Khartoum, seeking safer areas or escape abroad.

An East African initiative would extend the truce, which was due to run out Thursday night, for another three days. The head of the military, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, said he had accepted the proposal, but there was no immediate word from his rival, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the Rapid Support Forces.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has spoken repeatedly with both generals and helped broker the initial truce, said, “We are very actively working to extend the cease-fire.”

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly urged UK nationals who want to leave to get to an airfield north of Khartoum for evacuation flights before the truce ran out Thursday at midnight. “The situation could deteriorate over the coming days,” he warned. Britain said it has evacuated 897 people on eight flights to Cyprus, with operations continuing.

Darfur has been a battleground between the military and the paramilitary RSF since the conflict began nearly two weeks ago. Residents said the fighting in Genena was now dragging in tribal militias, tapping into longtime hatreds between the region’s two main communities, one that identifies as Arab, the other as east or central African.

In the early 2000s, African tribes in Darfur that had long complained of discrimination rebelled against the Khartoum government, which responded with a military campaign that the International Criminal Court later said amounted to genocide. State-backed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed were accused of widespread killings, rapes and other atrocities. The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF.