A three-day ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Fitr in Khartoum appears to be dead in the water as fighting continues in the Sudanese capital. According to the World Health Organization, more than 330 people have been killed over the past week. Now, with reports emerging that arms are being sent from Egypt and Libya, there are growing fears the situation could develop into a civil war that could draw in regional powers.
The violence represents a power struggle between the country’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often referred to as Hemedti. The pair were respectively leader and deputy leader of a transitional government which was supposed to hand over to a civilian administration after the 2019 ousting of the former president, Omar al-Bashir. Instead the pair launched a military takeover in October 2021.
The RSF began as a militia movement, the Janjaweed, comprising fighters from Darfur in the west of Sudan. It was set up by al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan from 1993 until April 2019 when he was deposed by the army in 2019 after months of popular protest against his regime.
