Here is the situation on Thursday, April 20, 2023:
Fighting
- Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and its sister cities, Omdurman and Bahri, have been rocked by fierce battles between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)
- A new attempt at a ceasefire in Khartoum failed.
- The RSF’s leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, gave a phone interview to Al Jazeera and said his group is calling for a humanitarian truce but “the other side does not want to.”
- “We are committed [to upholding] the truce, but the other side is bombing us with all [military] machines,” Dagalo said.
- “We are not talking about sitting down with a criminal,” the RSF commander said. “We have been negotiating [with army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan] for two years without any results.”
- In the morning, smoke and fires that had risen over Khartoum in previous days had abated before fighting erupted again.
- Some of the most intense fighting has been focused around the compound housing the army headquarters and residence of General al-Burhan.
Civilians and casualties
- International powers, struggling to evacuate their citizens after the airport and several districts housing embassies were caught up in the violence, have pushed repeatedly for a truce, to little effect.
- As many as 70 percent of the hospitals in Khartoum and neighbouring states have been rendered “out of service” due to the fighting, according to the Sudanese Doctors Union.
- More people have been leaving the capital. Most have been able to pass through checkpoints, but some have been stopped, according to residents and social media posts.
- Almost 330 people have died in the fighting, and almost 3,200 more have been wounded in Khartoum, the western region of Darfur and other states, Ahmed Al-Mandhari of the World Health Organization said.
- At least nine children have been killed and more than 50 wounded since the conflict broke out on Saturday, UNICEF said.
- On Twitter under Arabic hashtags such as #Khartoum_Needs, residents of each district have been mobilising support for one another. On WhatsApp, hundreds of users joined a group to pool resources.
Diplomacy
- Three flights carrying 177 Egyptian troops from Sudan have arrived in Cairo, and a separate group of 27 air force personnel are in the care of the Egyptian embassy in Sudan, according to military statements.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to al-Burhan and Dagalo as part of diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.
