2023-04-25 08:05:34
A girl waiting to leave Khartoum, the capital
- reporter, George Wright, Catherine Armstrong
- reporter, BBC News
Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary organization’Rapid Support Force (RSF)’ agreed to a temporary ceasefire from midnight on the 24th (local time), and the ceasefire seems to be maintained so far.
This is already the 4th armistice agreement, and the preceding armistice agreement has not been properly implemented even once.
US Secretary of State Tony Blincoln explained that after 48 hours of negotiations, the two sides agreed to this 72-hour ceasefire.
At least 400 people have been killed in the outbreak, and both sides have each announced that they will abide by the ceasefire agreement.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the violence could set off “catastrophic fires” that will engulf the wider region, including in Africa.
Since the outbreak of violence, the capital city of Khartoum has been hit hard, and residents here are unable to go out. In addition, food and water are increasingly scarce.
As key infrastructure such as water pipes were attacked, some residents are drinking water directly from the Nile River.
Meanwhile, there are hopeful voices that civilians can escape Khartoum as the two sides once again agree to a ceasefire. Governments around the world are also expected to evacuate their citizens abroad during the ceasefire period.
In fact, as fighting breaks out in capital cities and densely populated areas, countries around the world are rushing to evacuate their citizens, including diplomats and civilians.
The British government announced on the 25th that British passport holders and their immediate family members would be evacuated.
Meanwhile, on the 24th, Minister Blincoln explained that some convoys encountered a group of “robbers and looters” in the process of escaping citizens. He added that the US was potentially considering reopening diplomatic missions in Sudan, but that the current situation was “very challenging”.
According to network monitoring company ‘Netblocks’, an “internet blackout” occurred during the fighting in Sudan on the 23rd, but it was partially restored afterwards.
Meanwhile, it is expected that tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from Sudan and neighboring countries due to this outbreak.
Hassan Ibrahim, 91, a retired doctor, is among them.
Ibrahim, who lived near the main airport in Khartoum, where the worst fighting took place, was forced to evacuate with his family to Egypt due to the crisis.
Ibrahim told BBC World Service NewsHour that they were fortunate not to be caught in a shootout between the RSF and regular forces, but that the van driving behind them was shot.
Afterwards, the Ibrahim family traveled by bus and drove 12 hours to reach the border area, which they said was also “crowded and chaotic” trying to cross the border.
“There were many families with the elderly, children and infants,” said Ibrahim. “Sudanese people are trying to leave their homeland. It is a sad reality,” he added.
Meanwhile, British-Sudanese Iman Abgaga, who works as an obstetrician in the UK, was temporarily staying in Khartoum with her children.
Then, when the civil war broke out, he was evacuated to Djibouti using a flight organized by the French army. Gaga had to leave in a hurry, so his father, who lay on his sick bed, could not greet his mother and sisters with water.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Gaga said, “Sudan is dirty right now. There is overflowing garbage on the streets,” he said. “The sewage overflows and the stench vibrates. There will be various diseases and epidemics, but there are no hospitals,” he explained.
“death. There is only destruction and poverty.”
Meanwhile, the crisis that shook Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country, is mainly centered on the capital, Khartoum. It is a bloody conflict between warlords to seize power.
As RSF members were redeployed across the country, the military saw it as a threat, and tensions ensued for days before clashes erupted.
Sudan has been ruled by the military since the last coup in 2021, and the two generals leading it are General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who is at the center of the conflict, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as ‘Hemedti’.
General al-Burhan is the current government forces leader, and General Dagalo is in command of the RSF.
These two generals disagreed over the future direction of the country and the return of civilian rule. In particular, there is a sharp confrontation over how to integrate the 100,000 RSF personnel into the military and who should lead the newly formed military.
Dagalo denounced General al-Burhan’s government as “radical Islamist”, claiming that he and the RSF were “fighting for the people of Sudan to ensure the democratic progress they have long desired.”
However, there are many voices that it is difficult to believe this because of the cruelty that RSF has shown so far.
Meanwhile, General al-Burhan has stated that he supports a return to civilian rule rather than military rule, but will only hand over power to an elected government.
Meanwhile, 28 Koreans who escaped from Sudan arrived at Seoul Airport on the afternoon of the 25th by Air Force KC-330 ‘Cygnus’ aerial tanker.
Earlier, on the morning of the 23rd (local time), the Koreans departed from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and traveled about 1,170 km by land, arriving in Port Sudan, a port city in northeastern Sudan the next day.
After arriving in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the Air Force C-130J ‘Super Hercules’ transport plane, which was waiting, they arrived safely at Seoul Airport on the 25th at 4:00 pm on the Cygnus aerial refueling tanker, the Presidential Office said.
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