Global Courant
CAIRO — Sudan’s warring factions began a ceasefire on Sunday morning after two months of fighting threw the African nation into chaos.
Residents of the capital Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman reported “relative calm” in the first hours of the ceasefire on Sunday morning, after heavy clashes were reported the day before.
The three-day ceasefire came ahead of a pledging conference the UN and other countries will host on Monday to raise funds to cover Sudan’s humanitarian needs.
The UN says it received less than 16% of the $2.57 billion needed to help the needy in Sudan by 2023. Another $470 million is needed to support refugees in the Horn of Africa, she said.
The United States and Saudi Arabia announced a ceasefire on Saturday. Both have led concerted diplomatic efforts over the past two months to end the war.
The US and Saudi Arabia said in a joint statement that the military and its rival paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, agreed to cease fighting and “not seek any military advantage during the ceasefire”.
Sudan plunged into chaos after months of rising tensions between the rival generals culminated in open fighting across the country in mid-April, with the capital, Khartoum and the western region of Darfur bearing the brunt of the armed conflict.
The fighting turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. More than 3,000 people were killed and more than 6,000 others injured, according to Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim. It forced more than 2.2 million people to flee their homes to safer areas in Sudan and to neighboring countries.
The ceasefire was the latest in a series of ceasefire attempts brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia, all of which failed to stop fighting, with the meditators blaming the two warring sides for repeated violations.
The humanitarian situation in the war-ravaged country has deteriorated. At least 24.7 million people – more than half of the country’s population – are in need of humanitarian aid. And more than 100,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition with medical complications by the end of the year, the World Health Organization warned Friday.
The UN health agency said it needs $145 million to meet the increasing health needs of those affected by the conflict in Sudan and help those who have fled to neighboring countries.
“The scale of this health crisis is unprecedented,” said Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean. He added that money is urgently needed to avert an imminent collapse of the Sudanese healthcare system.
The conflict has devastated the country’s infrastructure. It also left about 60% of health facilities around the country out of action amid a drastic drop in medical supplies, which were destroyed or looted, according to WHO.
The UN agency said it confirmed at least 46 attacks on health facilities between April 15 and June 8.
