Shortly after the expiration of a 72-hour ceasefire, generally respected in Khartoum, fighting resumed in Sudan on Wednesday, June 21, between the army and paramilitaries at war for power.

Residents of the capital were awakened by artillery fire and the sound of fighting minutes after the truce ended, witnesses told AFP. Omdurman, the northern suburbs of the city, was the target of "artillery shelling" and "fighting", while "fighter jets" flew over other nearby neighborhoods, they added.

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A military source told AFP on Wednesday that the army had "launched an attack on the positions" of the paramilitaries, inflicting "heavy losses".

The struggle between the army, commanded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has plunged Sudan into chaos. Testimonies of the occupation of homes by combatants, looting and other abuses are multiplying.

On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry accused the "RSF militias" of attacking and looting the Pakistani embassy and the residence of the Algerian ambassador in Khartoum.

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On Tuesday night, a huge fire broke out at the intelligence headquarters in the capital, with both sides accusing each other of provoking it by bombing the building.

Since April 15, the war has killed more than 2,000 people, according to the NGO Acled, and more than 2.5 million displaced people and refugees, according to the UN.

Desertion of agricultural land

The international community pledged $1.5 billion in aid on Monday, half of the needs put forward by humanitarian agencies. According to the UN, 25 million of Sudan's 48 million people cannot survive without humanitarian aid.

"The conflict has prevented many farmers from planting when the rainy season arrives," Islamic Relief warned Wednesday.

The summer agricultural season begins with the first rains at the end of May, but this year farmers have deserted their land due to fighting. "The impact will be catastrophic on the next harvest and millions of people will face hunger," the NGO warned.

On Wednesday, "explosions, heavy fire and shells" hit populated neighborhoods of Dilling, South Kordofan, 500 kilometers south of Khartoum, according to residents.

Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan bordering Chad, is experiencing the deadliest violence. In El-Geneina, the capital of Western Darfur state, 1,100 people were killed, according to the UN. The streets are littered with corpses hastily covered with clothes, under the scorching sun.

Flight to Chad

On Tuesday, General Daglo denounced "a tribal conflict" in El-Geneina, saying he had ordered his men "not to intervene" and accusing the army of "creating sedition by distributing weapons" to civilians.

With a few belongings under their arms, the inhabitants fled in long columns towards Chad under the crossfire of the belligerents but also of tribal fighters and armed civilians. More than 150,000 people have fled to Chad, according to the UN.

In total, nearly 600,000 people have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday, while more than two million Sudanese are internally displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

In Darfur, home to African ethnic groups as well as Arab tribes, "the conflict now has an ethnic dimension," warned the UN, the African Union and the East African bloc IGAD.

"Large-scale attacks against civilians, based on their ethnic origin, allegedly committed by Arab militias and armed men in RSF uniforms are very worrying and, if proven, could amount to crimes against humanity," warned the head of the UN mission in Sudan, Volker Perthes.

Already in the 2s, a civil war had bloodied Darfur, where the Arab Janjaweed militiamen, who later gave birth to the RSF, had carried out the scorched-earth policy ordered by then-dictator Omar al-Bashir against ethnic minority rebels.

With AFP

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