We are pausing this live blog for now and will return with big breaking developments. You can read our latest reports from Sudan here:
Summary of the day so far …
Heavy explosions and gunfire rocked Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman early on Friday, residents said, despite the extension of a fragile truce between the county’s two top generals whose power struggle has killed hundreds. Videos and images being sent from Khartoum continue to show smoke over the city. There have been multiple truce efforts since fighting broke out on 15 April between Sudan’s army led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his deputy-turned-rival, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti. All have ultimately failed so far.
Residents reported fierce clashes in Khartoum’s neighbourhood of Kafouri, where the military earlier had used warplanes to bomb the RSF. Clashes were also reported around the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace and the area close to the Khartoum international airport. All these areas have been flashpoints since the war erupted. The RSF has claimed that the army’s aircraft bombed its positions in Omdurman and Jabal Awliya, south of Khartoum.
The Darfur Bar Association, a civil society group, said fighters were “launching rockets at houses” in the West Darfur state capital, El Geneina, about 685 miles (1,100km) west of Khartoum. It also reported firing from “rifles, machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons”. AFP reports the Bar Association said fighting had spread “nearly all over the city” and fighters had looted and torched “markets, public buildings, aid warehouses and banks”.
Turkey said one of its evacuation aircraft was hit on Friday by light gunfire outside Khartoum with no causalities. Sudan’s army claimed it had been fired upon by the RSF. The RSF denied the claim, saying it did not have a presence near the airstrip being used for civilian evacuations.
Officials monitoring evacuee arrivals say that since Tuesday when the first 72-hour ceasefire kicked in, more than 1,500 people have been brought in on RAF rescue flights from Sudan. An estimated 850 men, women and children have been flown onwards to the UK on charter flights provided by the British government. A UK-bound charter plane carrying roughly 250 people evacuated from Sudan on RAF rescue flights left Cyprus at 2pm BST. A second charter carrying evacuees is scheduled to head to Birmingham early evening local time.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said an estimated 20,000 people, primarily Chadian and Sudanese nationals, had crossed Sudan’s border into Chad since fighting began almost two weeks ago. The UN refugee agency estimated that up to 100,000 people may seek refuge in Chad in the coming weeks from Sudan, as well as a further 170,000 people fleeing to South Sudan.
The foreign ministry of Saudia Arabia announced it evacuated another 195 people from Port Sudan to Jeddah. The HMS Makkah had 195 people on board, and included citizens from Pakistan, Palestine, Thailand, Mauritania, Sri Lanka, the US, Poland, India, UK, Austria, Indonesia, Canada, Iraq, Egypt, Australia and Syria.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called upon both sides of the fighting in Sudan to “immediately end hostilities” and to “halt hostilities in residential areas and the targeting of civilian population and infrastructure”.
The South Sudanese ambassador to the UK, Agnes Oswaha, has said that her country will need more finanical aid to help cope with an expected influx of refugees from neighbouring Sudan.
Updated
