Sudan fighting in its 19th day: A list of key events

European, Asian and African nationals prepare to board a ship to Saudi Arabia, at Port Sudan [File: Reuters]

Here is the situation on Wednesday, May 3, 2023:

Fighting

• Sudan’s warring military factions agreed to a new and longer seven-day ceasefire from Thursday, neighbour and mediator South Sudan said.
• South Sudan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that mediation championed by President Salva Kiir led both sides to agree on a weeklong truce and to name envoys for peace talks.
• Air raids and shooting in the Khartoum capital region undercut their latest supposed truce. Witnesses reported renewed air attacks and anti-aircraft fire in the capital on Tuesday.
• Beyond Khartoum, lawlessness has engulfed the Darfur region from where more than 70 percent of the 330,000 people displaced inside Sudan by the fighting have fled.
• According to local reports in el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, there was a return “to some semblance of normalcy, as markets reopen and residents cautiously go about their lives”.

Humanitarian situation

• Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) said it had delivered some aid to Khartoum from Port Sudan, a road journey of about 800km (500 miles).
• Sudan’s health ministry reported on Tuesday that 550 people have died and 4,926 injured in the fighting so far.
• A Sudanese physician, Howida Elhassan, posted a video on social media of medical staff struggling to cope with a surge of wounded civilians at a hospital in Khartoum’s East Nile neighbourhood.
• “On days when there are battles in the area, we receive between 30 to 40 injured people” in addition to regular cases, Elhassan said. “Other medical staff cannot reach us because roads are no longer safe. We are understaffed and lack equipment.”

(Al Jazeera)

Diplomacy and evacuation

• A broader disaster could be in the making as Sudan’s impoverished neighbours grapple with an influx of people fleeing the country.
• “The entire region could be affected,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said in an interview with a Japanese newspaper on Tuesday.
• Before the announcement by South Sudan, UN head of mission Volker Perthes said discussions involving Saudi and US mediators were under way with the rival generals to firm up a truce.
• India’s embassy in Khartoum was stormed and looted, Sudan’s army said in a statement, citing a report from the ambassador.