Crisis In Sudan; Ceasefire, War In Place!
ISWNews Analysis Group – Despite an agreement between warring parties in Sudan to hold a ceasefire proposed by the United States’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken for three days, the military conflicts still continue in different cities, including capital Khartoum.
Early on Tuesday after the end of the ninth day of clashes in Sudan, Blinken declared that the heads of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have agreed to establish a three-day-long truce. The US official also warned against the presence of the militants of the Wagner Private Military Company as well as Head of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin in Sudan.
Prigozhin has recently written an open letter, expressing his readiness to broker a consensus between the two Sudanese groups to establish a ceasefire. The Russian influential figure mentioned: I am Yevgeny Prigozhin. I stayed for a long time in Sudan and I had connections with all decision-makers in the country. The United Nations and many other parties want to spill the blood of the Sudanese people and I personally wish peace for the nation. Now what is taking place in Sudan is not what we trained the Sudanese for taking arms, because we trained them to defend their border areas in the face of enemies.
The three-day-long ceasefire in Sudan has been established with the mediation of the United States in a situation that the country is facing growing crisis and different countries started withdrawing their diplomats and citizens from the African country.
Ben Wallace, Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom, said that the military operation of evacuating diplomatic staff and foreign nationals from capital Khartoum was carried out in a vast cooperation among 1,200 military forces from Britain and other allied states. Sky News quoted local sources as saying that the UK army dispatched a group of its military forces to a port in eastern Sudan with the use of a large military transport aircraft Boeing C-17 in order to conduct reconnaissance and evacuation mission of the British nationals.
The immediate evacuation of foreign nationals from Sudan indicates the dire situation in the country and it seems that the African nation would experience more painful developments in the coming days.
Even though that the truce has been established in Sudan, the confrontation is still ravaging in Khartoum and certain points in the country. The Sudanese Armed Forces’ fighter jets pounded positions of the Rapid Support Forces in several areas such as Al-Jarief, Kafouri, Khartoum Bahri (Khartoum North) and Al-Maouna road in northern districts of the capital city on Monday. The Sudanese Armed Forces also claimed that they succeeded in mopping up the RSF paramilitary group in Al Abyad city in southern Sudan.
In western Sudan, heavy clashes kicked off in Al Junaynah, a city in the West Darfur province, but there has not been reported any special advances of the warring sides.
Furthermore, a diplomat, who was the administrative attaché at the embassy of Egypt, was killed in Khartoum during the last day conflicts. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry and the Sudanese Armed Forces issued statements to confirm the death of the Egyptian diplomat. The Sudanese Armed Forces claimed in its initial declaration that the Egyptian diplomat was a military advisor, but it apologized in its second account for the mistake and announced that the diplomat was an administrative attaché, who was killed in a raid by the Rapid Support Forces.
Over the last 11 days, Sudan turned into the scene of bloody clashes between the Commander of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, generally referred to as Hemetti and the Sudanese Armed Forces supervised by General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan. The climax of the civil war happened in Khartoum, Al Fashir, Al Junaynah and Merowe, which still continues.
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