Ein News - 5/21/2023 10:05:11 AM - GMT (+3 )
Air strikes and artillery exchanges shook the Sudanese capital Saturday, May 20, and armed men ransacked the Qatari embassy as the country's warring generals kept up their struggle for control.
Khartoum residents told AFP that heavy fighting raged despite repeated international calls for a humanitarian truce. The area around the state television building in Khartoum's sister city Omdurman was one of the sites bombarded, witnesses said.
On Saturday, Qatar's embassy was the latest diplomatic mission to be attacked, drawing condemnation from Doha. "The State of Qatar condemned in the strongest terms the irregular armed forces' storming and vandalizing its embassy building in Khartoum," the foreign ministry said.
"The embassy staff had previously been evacuated and... none of the diplomats or embassy staff were subjected to any harm," the ministry said. It renewed calls for "an immediate halt to the fighting in Sudan, exercising maximum restraint... and sparing civilians the consequences of the fighting."
Qatar did not specifically identify Daglo's RSF as responsible but a statement from the pro-Burhan authorities put the blame squarely on the paramilitaries.
The power struggle between regular army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into fighting on April 15.
The conflict has killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians, and displaced more than one million. The United Nations has warned of a fast-deteriorating humanitarian situation in Africa's third-largest country, where one in three people already relied on aid before the war.
On Friday, Burhan sacked Daglo, giving his title of vice president of the ruling Sovereign Council to former rebel leader Malik Agar, and appointed three allies to top jobs in the military.
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A former rebel leader who signed a peace deal with Khartoum authorities in 2020, Agar said in a statement Saturday that he was determined to try to "end the war" and press for negotiations. He also addressed Daglo directly saying "Sudan's stability can only be re-established by a professional and unified army".
Saturday's attack came a day after Arab leaders meeting at a summit in Saudi Arabia urged Sudan's feuding generals to halt the fighting. There have been multiple failed truce efforts since the fighting started, and representatives of both sides have been holding talks in Saudi Arabia.
Le Monde with AFP
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