More than 180 people killed in Sudan fighting

Kathmandu: At least 185 people have been killed and another 1,800 injured in three days of fighting between rival factions in Sudan.

The United Nations special representative for Sudan Volker Perthes said on Monday that the fighting between army and paramilitary force has killed at least 185 and injured 1,800 people.

‘It’s a very fluid situation so it’s very difficult to say where the balance is shifting to,’ Perthes told reporters via video from New York. He also said that the warring sides were not ‘not giving the impression that they want mediation for a peace between them right away’.

The death toll and injuries emerged after the violence broke out suddenly between the army and paramilitary forces led by rival generals, trapping millions of people in their homes. The latest fighting also forced people to seek shelter and led to low supplies in many areas.

The power struggle pits General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander of the armed forces, against General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group.

Both the general were former allies and staged military coup in October 2021. But the violence triggered by their rivalry has raised the spectre of civil war just as Sudanese were trying to revive the drive for a democratic, civilian government after decades of military rule.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again called on Sudan’s warring parties to ‘immediately cease hostilities’. He warned that further escalation ‘could be devastating for the country and the region’.

The White House on Monday also called for an immediate ceasefire to fighting in Sudan. ‘We deplore the escalating violence out of Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan’, the White House said, ‘We call for an immediate ceasefire without conditions.’

Meanwhile, Sudan’s army has order the dissolution of RSF on Monday.

As the fighting showed no sign of abating, Dagalo took to Twitter to call for the international community to intervene against al-Burhan, branding him a ‘radical Islamist who is bombing civilians from the air’.

In a rare statement since the fighting flared, al-Burhan told Al Jazeera on Saturday that he was ‘surprised by Rapid Support Forces attacking his home’ and that what was happening ‘should prevent the formation of forces outside the army’.