The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, judged yesterday on Wednesday that the world “failed” to prevent the outbreak of war between generals that is bleeding Sudan, a country where the United Nations is now asking for security guarantees to distribute aid in the midst of hostilities.

Despite the announcement of an “agreement in principle” by the generals to extend the ceasefire, which has so far never been observed, until May 11, “fighting and explosions” continued to rock the capital Khartoum yesterday, while military aircraft flew over the city. residents told AFP.

Since April 15, the troops of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo or “Hameti” have been fighting relentlessly.

At least 550 people have been killed and more than 5,000 others injured, according to the official death toll, which is no doubt greatly underestimated.

“We can say that we failed to prevent” the outbreak of the war, which occupied the UN “for six months”, acknowledged yesterday Wednesday its Secretary General, Mr. Guterres, who expressed himself in Nairobi.

In a country “like Sudan”, where “the economic and humanitarian situation is so desperate” this bloody “struggle for power between two people” is impermissible, he added.

Some 850 kilometers east of Khartoum, in the coastal city of Port Sudan, which has so far been unscathed by hostilities, UN humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths demanded assurances from the two rival generals.

“The general assurances must be translated into specific commitments”, he stressed, after clarifying that he spoke with the two generals by phone.

Earlier yesterday, six UN trucks were “looted” on their way to Darfur, in the western part of the country, he added.

Prior to this looting, “17,000” of the 80,000 tons of pre-war stockpiles had already been stolen. While the UN is waiting to receive clearances from customs to distribute “80 tonnes of essential medical equipment”.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, addressed the Security Council on chaos in Khartoum.

“On Monday, an air force strike hit a hospital,” while the DTY attacked several “houses in Khartoum, launched attacks in densely populated urban areas” of the Sudanese capital.

The city’s five million residents are forced to survive without water, electricity, and food shortages amid stifling heat, in a country where one in three residents were already in need of humanitarian aid before the war even began. Only 16% of Khartoum’s hospitals are operational.

“Agreement in principle”

South Sudan, which has historically played the role of mediator, recently announced the conclusion of an “agreement in principle” for a ceasefire “from May 4 to 11”.

On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the army announced that it “accepted” this extension, proposed by IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional organization of East Africa), calling for an “African solution to the continent’s problems”, while as now he said he was responding to mediation efforts by the US and Saudi Arabia.

General Burhan’s camp said it had pledged to “name an envoy to negotiate the ceasefire” with a counterpart from General Daglo’s camp under the auspices of “the presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti”, in a country that has no yet to be defined.

DTY had not yet commented after midnight.

The army made it clear in a statement that all its commitments are made on the condition of “the observance of the ceasefire” by the other side.

The fighting has displaced more than 335,000 people and already turned 115,000 more into refugees, according to the UN, which expects the number of refugees to rise eightfold.

Sudanese consular authorities in Eritrea have announced that refugees from Sudan can now enter the country without visas, as foreigners continue to be rushed out by the hundreds, mainly through the Red Sea port of Port Sudan.

In Darfur, which is hardest hit like the capital, weapons have been distributed to civilians, according to the United Nations, which has killed at least 100 people in the region in a week. The region still had not healed the wounds of the war that broke out in 2003.

For Antonio Guterres, it is “absolutely essential” that the crisis does not extend beyond Sudan’s borders and threaten the transition to democracy and the ongoing peace processes in neighboring states.

He called for “massive” support for Sudan’s neighbor Chad, insisting that “peace processes” are still ongoing in other countries in the region, especially in Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also said the war could “hit the whole region”, adding that “we will do everything possible to hold talks”, while Egypt hosts “millions” of refugees.

The UN’s special envoy to Sudan, Volker Pertes, said the rivals are willing to “start technical talks” solely on a ceasefire, possibly in Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom has ties to both generals.

“Strategic” pressure?

The two generals drove civilians out of the transitional government with them in the October 2021 coup, two years after the overthrow of former dictator Omar El Bashir. But their differences began to grow, and their disagreement over the terms of inclusion of paramilitaries into the regular forces erupted into open war on April 15.

At the same time, yesterday the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in Saudi Arabia to discuss the crisis in Sudan, while the African Union called for coordination, not to take action in a “disorganized” or unilateral manner.

For Ernst Jan Hogendorn, a Sudan specialist at the Atlantic Council think tank, the international community should “apply pressure in a strategic way”, notably by freezing the bank accounts and blocking the trade activities of the two warring parties, in order to reduce the possibility them “to fight and supply.”