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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls for an immediate truce as fighting intensifies in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan’s brutal civil war, which the United Nations says has created the world’s worst war. humanitarian crisis.
Guterres’ appeal, made Friday evening, follows a peace initiative presented Monday by Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris to the UN Security Council, which called on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to disarm.
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The project was rejected by RSF, calling it “wishful thinking”.
War broke out in April 2023 when a power struggle broke out between the Sudanese army and the RSF paramilitary group. Since then, the conflict has displaced 9.6 million people internally and forced 4.3 million others to flee to neighboring countries, while 30.4 million Sudanese are now in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN figures.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Mohamed Khaled Khiari told the Security Council this week that fears of intensified fighting during the dry season had been confirmed.
“Each day that passes brings staggering levels of violence and destruction,” he said. “Civilians are enduring immense and unimaginable suffering, with no end in sight. »
The conflict has shifted in recent weeks to Sudan’s central Kordofan region, where the RSF captured the strategic Heglig oil field on December 8. The seizure prompted South Sudanese forces to enter Sudan to protect infrastructure, which Khiari said reflects “the increasingly complex nature of the conflict and its expanding regional dimensions.”
RSF also launched a final effort to consolidate full control over North Darfur Statesince December 24, attacking towns in the Dar Zaghawa region, near the Chadian border. The offensive threatens to close the last escape corridor for civilians fleeing the country towards Chad.
Violence spread beyond Sudan’s borders on Friday when a drone attack killed two Chadian soldiers at a military camp in the border town of Tine.
A Chadian military intelligence officer told the Reuters news agency that the drone came from Sudan, although he did not know whether it was launched by the army or the RSF. Chad placed its air force on high alert and warned it would “exercise its right to retaliate” if the strike was confirmed to be deliberate.
Despite the intensification of the conflict, the UN made a rare breakthrough, declaring on Friday that it had carried out its first assessment mission to El-Fasher since the fall of the city to the RSF.
UN humanitarian coordinator Denise Brown said the mission followed “months of intense fighting, siege and widespread violations against civilians and aid workers”, adding that “hundreds of thousands of civilians have had to flee El-Fasher and its surrounding areas”.
Earlier this month, Yale University released a report documenting systematic massacres carried out by the RSF in El-Fasher, with satellite images showing evidence of large-scale burning and burial of human remains.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned last week, the fighting was “horrible” and “atrocious”, telling a press conference that “one day the story of what really happened there will be known and everyone involved will look bad.”
Rubio has said he wants the war to end before the New Year, but there is no clear indication that progress has been made.
Prime Minister Idris’s peace plan proposed an immediate UN-monitored ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of the RSF from the approximately 40 percent of Sudan it controls. But an advisor to RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo rejected the proposal, calling it “closer to fantasy than politics.”
Upon his return to Port Sudan on Friday, Idris drew a red line, saying the government would reject international peacekeeping forces because Sudan had been “burned” by them in the past.
