US and Saudi Arabia broker 72-hour truce among Sudanese factions at war

Rival factions in Sudan have agreed to a new 72-hour ceasefire starting Sunday, according to a statement issued by Saudi and US mediators on Saturday.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States announce the agreement of representatives of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to cease fire throughout Sudan for a period of 72 hours,” a statement from the Saudi Foreign Ministry said on Saturday evening.

Sudanese Health Minister Haitham Ibrahim told the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath channel on Saturday that more than 3,000 people have been killed and 6,000 wounded since the conflict broke out in Sudan in mid-April.

Ibrahim said that only half of Khartoum’s 130 hospitals are still functioning and that all hospitals in West Darfur state are out of service.

The situation in Sudan is “catastrophic”: a Sudanese official

The deputy head of Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council described the situation in the country as “catastrophic”.

“The situation in Sudan now is catastrophic,” Malek Agar said during a discussion session on Saturday at the Cairo-based Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies.

He added, “There is complete destruction in Khartoum, and the Rapid Support Forces occupy residential neighbourhoods.”

Agar warned that the collapse of Sudan “means a complete collapse of the Horn of Africa.”

The war must end with the victory of the army. The war must end with the support of the army but on the condition that Sudan will have only one army to defend it.

The Sudanese official accused the RSF of taking civilians as human shields. “They treat the country as private property,” he added.

“We are confident that the army will win this war,” Agar stressed.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the current conflict in Sudan has displaced more than 2.2 million people.

A row has flared up between the army and the RSF in recent months over the integration of the paramilitary group into the armed forces – a key condition of Sudan’s transitional agreement with the political groups.

Sudan has been without a functioning government since the fall of 2021, when the army dismissed the transitional government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and declared a state of emergency, in a move denounced by the political forces as a “coup.”

The transitional period, which began in August 2019 after the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir, was scheduled to end with elections in early 2024.