his head UNAntónio Guterres, ruled yesterday Wednesday that the Organization “failed” to prevent the outbreak of a war between the generals, which bleeds Sudana country where the United Nations is now asking for security guarantees for the distribution of aid in the face of hostilities.

Despite the announcement by the generals of an “agreement in principle” to extend the truce, which has never been respected until May 11, “fights and explosions” continued to rock the capital Khartoum yesterday, with military planes flying over the city, residents told AFP.

Since April 15, the troops of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Commander of the Operational Support Force (SOF), paramilitary General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, or Hameti, have been fighting incessantly.

According to the official death toll, which is no doubt a gross understatement, at least 550 people were killed and more than 5,000 injured.

“We can say that we failed to prevent” the outbreak of a war that occupied the UN “for six months,” its secretary general, Mr. Guterres, admitted yesterday Wednesday, speaking in Nairobi.

He added that in a country “like Sudan”, where “the economic and humanitarian situation is so desperate”, this bloody “power struggle between two people” is unacceptable.

About 850 kilometers east of Khartoum, in the still unscathed coastal city of Port Sudan, UN humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths demanded guarantees from two rival generals.

“General assurances must be translated into specific commitments,” he stressed, adding that he had spoken to two generals on the phone.

Earlier yesterday, six UN trucks were “looted” en route to Darfur, in the western part of the country, he added.

Prior to this looting, “17,000” of 80,000 tons of pre-war stocks had already been stolen. While the UN is waiting for permission from customs to distribute “80 tons of essential medical equipment.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk addressed the Security Council about the chaos in Khartoum.

“On Monday, the Air Force hit the hospital” while the DTY hit several “houses in Khartoum, hit dense urban areas” of the Sudanese capital.

The city’s five million residents are forced to survive without water, electricity and food shortages in a sweltering heat wave in a country where one in three residents needed humanitarian aid even before the start of the war. Only 16% of Khartoum’s hospitals are operational.

“Principal agreement”

South Sudan, a historical mediator, recently announced a “deal in principle” for a ceasefire “from 4 to 11 May”.

On Wednesday night to Thursday, the army announced that it was “accepting” this extension proposed by IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development, East Africa Regional Organization), calling for an “African solution to the problems of the continent.” he now said he was responding to US-Saudi mediation efforts.

General Burhan’s camp said it promised to “appoint an envoy to negotiate a ceasefire” with a colleague from General Daglo’s camp under the auspices of the “presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti” in a country yet to be defined. .

DTY has not yet commented on the situation after midnight.

The army made it clear in a statement that all of its obligations are assumed subject to the “observance of the ceasefire” by the other side.

The fighting has displaced more than 335,000 people and has already turned 115,000 refugees into refugees, according to the UN, which expects the number of refugees to rise eightfold.

Sudanese consular authorities in Eritrea have announced that refugees from Sudan can now enter the country without visas as foreigners continue to be forced out by the hundreds, mostly through the port of Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

In Darfur, which suffered the most, like the capital, weapons were distributed to civilians, according to the United Nations, resulting in at least 100 deaths in the region in a week. The region has still not healed the wounds of the war that broke out in 2003.

For António Guterres, it is “absolutely imperative” that the crisis does not extend beyond Sudan and threaten the democratic transition and ongoing peace processes in neighboring states.

He called for “grassroots” support for Sudan’s neighbor Chad, insisting that “peace processes” are still ongoing elsewhere in the region, especially in Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi also ruled that the war could “affect the entire region”, adding that “we will do our best to negotiate” while there are “millions” of refugees in Egypt.

UN Special Envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes said the rivals are ready to “start technical talks” solely on a ceasefire, possibly in Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom has ties to both generals.

“Strategic” pressure?

The two generals pushed civilians out of the transitional government with them in a coup in October 2021, two years after the ouster of former dictator Omar El-Bashir. But their disagreements began to grow, and on April 15 their disagreements over the conditions for the inclusion of paramilitary formations in the regular forces resulted in open war.

Yet yesterday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in Saudi Arabia to discuss the crisis in Sudan, and the African Union called for coordination, not “disorganized” or unilateral action.

According to Ernst Jahn Hogendoorn, a Sudan specialist at the Atlantic Council think tank, the international community should “apply strategic pressure,” in particular by freezing bank accounts and blocking trade activities of the two warring parties to reduce their ability to “fight and supply.”

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}