Fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces continued for a fifth day on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, after an internationally brokered truce quickly fell apart.
A 24-hour cease-fire was to have been in effect from sundown Tuesday, April 18, 2023, to sundown Wednesday, with the warring sides pledging publicly to abide by it after U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken spoke to both Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
Their failure to pause fighting for even a day, despite high-level diplomatic pressure, suggests they remain bent on pursuing a military victory and raises the potential for a prolonged conflict.
The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) traded blame for violating a 24-hour humanitarian truce that was declared on Tuesday.
A school teacher in Sudan’s capital Khartoum told reporters on Wednesday that one of his pupils was shot in the head by a stray bullet amid continued fighting in the country. He remarked that residents were getting used to the “scary” situation.
The teacher said that heavy sounds of artillery could be heard on Wednesday morning, adding that “no one is listening or respecting the ceasefire”.
The interview was briefly disrupted by sounds of gunfire as the teacher requested to move to a safer place.
The teacher disclosed that food supplies were getting less and less every day as shops and supermarkets remain closed. “Electricity is stable but any moment it can go off,” he said.
Nearly 200 people have been killed in the fighting which began on Saturday, April 15, 2023.
Also on Wednesday, a Sudanese doctors’ union disclosed that 39 out of 59 hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, and nearby states are “out of service”, highlighting the worsening humanitarian situation in the country.
The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) noted in a statement on Facebook that only 20 hospitals were fully or partially operational.
“Among the hospitals that have stopped working, there are nine hospitals that were bombed, and 16 hospitals that were subjected to forced evacuation,” the CCSD said.
Wagner Denies Involvement In Sudan Clashes
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Head of Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group, stressed that the private military company has not had a presence in Sudan for more than two years.
“I can tell you with absolute certainty, with absolute accuracy, and you can enter my words in any protocols for any institution in the highest levels: as of today, there is not a single private military company (PMC) Wagner fighter, I stress – not a single one – in Sudan. And it has been this way for over two years.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin
Prigozhin made this assertion in a post on the Kepka Prigozhina (Prigozhin’s Hat) Telegram channel.
It was in response to a journalist for the French-language magazine, Jeune Afrique, who asked whether Wagner Group was supporting the Sudanese paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the ongoing clashes with the military.
In other developments, Japan is planning to send a military aircraft to evacuate its citizens from Sudan amid the deadly fighting.
Japanese government Spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno divulged that there were 60 Japanese nationals stuck in Sudan.
The government would do “its utmost to ensure the safety of Japanese residents in Sudan, including the safety and evacuation of Japanese nationals, in close cooperation with the G7 and other major countries”, Matsuno averred.
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