Fighting
• Army soldiers clashed with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in downtown Khartoum as deadly hostilities entered a third week despite the latest ceasefire, It is set to expire at the end of Sunday.
• The most recent three-day truce was agreed on Thursday after mediation led by the United States, Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the United Nations.
• Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok warned that the conflict in the turbulent African nation could deteriorate into one of the world’s worst civil wars if not stopped early.
• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for negotiations to end the bloodshed: “There is no right to go on fighting for power when the country is falling apart,” he told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television.
Humanitarian crisis
• The World Food Programme warned that the ongoing violence could plunge all of East Africa into a humanitarian crisis with food prices in Sudan skyrocketing.
• The violence has killed at least 528 people and wounded about 4,600, the health ministry said, but those figures are almost certainly incomplete.
• Civilians fleeing the violence kept streaming into neighboring countries. Satellite images showed long bus convoys at the Egyptian border. The UN said at least 20,000 people have fled into Chad, 4,000 into South Sudan, 3,500 to Ethiopia and 3,000 to the Central African Republic.
Evacuations
•The United Kingdom promised to maintain support for Britons trapped in Sudan but said conditions had grown too dangerous to continue evacuation flights.
• A further 363 Indonesian citizens evacuated from Sudan arrived home on a second flight by Indonesia’s flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
•Two Chinese naval vessels transported 940 Chinese citizens and 231 foreigners to a port in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from Wednesday through Saturday, ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said in a statement.
Source: aljazeera.com
