By Athena Papakosta

The ceasefire violation in Sudan, the second attempted in a week, symbolizes the failure of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and other regional powers to persuade General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dago to stop the ongoing conflict with the aim of absolute control of the country’s power.

In light of this, the United States and other countries are preparing to evacuate their citizens from Sudan. This is a complex and difficult mission as major airports are now battlegrounds and traffic on the streets of Khartoum is tantamount to a death sentence.

At the moment the US military is moving its forces to neighboring Djibouti with the aim of possibly evacuating personnel from the US Embassy. Japan is also sending military aircraft to Djibouti.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is asking a truce lasting at least three days on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr celebrations marking the end of Ramadan. “We are living an important moment in the Muslim calendar. I think it’s the right time to observe the truce”, he emphasized while speaking to journalists.

Nevertheless, the efforts of the American Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and others who spoke with the two generals in order to achieve a ceasefire for 24 hours were crowned with failure. Accordingly, efforts by Egypt, which is an ally of the Sudanese army, but also by the United Arab Emirates – which maintains ties with the RSF – for talks between the two sides ended in an impasse. Burhan and Daglo seem equally determined to win the battle. As a result, Sudan is reeling from terror and uncertainty with the death toll rising and images of bodies lying in the streets circulating around the world.

The shooting does not stop throughout the day in Khartoum. According to housebound residents, clashes on Thursday were fierce around the military headquarters in the capital while military warplanes struck RSF positions at the airport and the neighboring town of Omdurman. The battles are now recorded all over the country.

Residents are desperate as their supplies run out. Some managed to flee their homes and find shelter in schools and sports facilities. At the same time, 70% of hospitals across the country have been shut down due to the fighting with nine in total having been bombed.

The fighting is devastating for impoverished Sudan where 1/3 of the population, about 16 million people, need humanitarian aid and 50,000 children suffer from malnutrition. Already up to 20,000 Sudanese have fled to neighboring Chad while 320 Sudanese soldiers have also fled the Darfur region where the RSF remains omnipotent. Fears of the crisis spreading remain and the possibility of Sudan slipping into a new civil war would spell disaster, according to analysts, who stress that then the rest of the countries in the region will be forced to choose sides.