Sudan Fighting Resumes after Brief Truce

Mourners gathered to bury the dead and bodies lay in a Khartoum hospital Sunday as deadly shelling and gunfire resumed after the end of a 24-hour ceasefire in Sudan.

Fighting has raged in the northeast African country since mid-April, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, turned on each other.

The latest in a series of ceasefire agreements enabled civilians trapped in the capital Khartoum to venture outside and stock up on food and other essential supplies.

But on Sunday they gathered on a sandy plot of land in the south of Sudan’s capital to bury victims of an artillery strike.

Witness told AFP that only 10 minutes after the truce ended at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) on Sunday, the city was rocked again by shelling and clashes.

Men in Khartoum’s Azhari neighborhood carried a woman, her body lying on a green cot and covered with a light-coloured cloth, toward her final resting place, a hole dug out of the soil on bumpy ground across from some houses.

Her own home had been shelled, leaving her among more than 1,800 killed during eight weeks of war, according to figures from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

One relative, who did not give his name, condemned the “unacceptable” act and said: “We pray for an end to this war.”

A pro-democracy neighborhood group had reported that fighting in Khartoum’s south sent “shells landing in citizens’ homes”.

On beds at a hospital in the area, two bodies lay under colored cloths.

Heavy artillery fire was heard across greater Khartoum. Residents also reported air strikes and anti-aircraft fire.