Khartoum witnessed air raids and gunfire on Saturday, while the evacuation of thousands of foreigners from Sudan continued, as the battles between the army and the Rapid Support Forces entered their third week, despite the declared armistice and international efforts to stop the fighting.

Sudan has plunged into chaos since the bloody struggle for power erupted in mid-April between army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, nicknamed "Hemedti".

The war left at least 528 dead and 4,599 wounded, according to figures announced by the Ministry of Health on Saturday, but the toll is likely to be higher.

About 75,000 people have been displaced to neighboring countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad and South Sudan, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while foreign countries are organizing large-scale evacuations.

In this context, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, expressed his regret at the continuation of the fighting while “the country is collapsing,” according to what he said in a statement to the Saudi news channel, Al-Arabiya.

The two parties to the conflict exchange accusations of violating the armistice, which was extended for three days under international mediation, and ends Sunday at midnight (22:00 GMT).

Residents trying to flee or staying in their homes suffer comprehensive crises, with water and electricity cuts and food shortages.

"We woke up again to the sounds of warplanes and anti-aircraft guns all over the neighborhood," a resident of southern Khartoum told AFP.

Another witness confirmed that the fighting has been going on since dawn, especially around the headquarters of the public television channel in the suburb of Omdurman, north of Khartoum.

And the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate announced that 70% of the health facilities in the areas close to the fighting sites are out of service, and many of them are under bombardment.
The two warring generals exchanged accusations through the media on Friday.

On the American Al-Hurra channel, Al-Burhan described the RSF as a "militia that seeks to destroy Sudan," stressing the influx of "mercenaries" from Chad, the Central African Republic and Niger.

As for Daglo, for his part, he spoke on the "BBC" channel about his opponent, describing him as a "traitor," considering that he is "not trustworthy."

In 2021, Al-Burhan and Daglo overthrew their civilian partners, after sharing power with them since the fall of President Omar Al-Bashir in 2019.
However, differences soon emerged between them and escalated, the most prominent of which was the conditions for integrating the Rapid Support Forces into the army, before it developed into an armed conflict on April 15th.

Since then, evacuations have continued, and on Saturday, a ship carrying about 1,900 people of different nationalities arrived in Jeddah, in western Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia announced that, in total, about 4,879 of its citizens and citizens of 96 other countries had been evacuated through the Kingdom.
Mehrdad Malekzadeh, 28, who grew up in Sudan, was one of the first Iranians to be evacuated on Saturday. In Jeddah, he described to AFP the daily shelling and explosions in Khartoum, saying, "We never imagined that the situation would become so tense."

The World Food Program expects millions more people to face hunger in one of the world's poorest countries, where nearly a third of Sudan's 45 million people needed food assistance before the war broke out.

In West Darfur, at least 96 people have been killed since Monday in El Geneina, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which described the situation as "serious".

Looting, destruction and arson are increasing, including inside camps for the displaced, according to Doctors Without Borders, which was forced to "stop almost all of its work in West Darfur" because of the violence, according to the organization's deputy director in Sudan, Sylvain Peron.

In a statement, Peron warned that his organization is "very concerned about the impact of violence on those who have already suffered waves of violence."

The Darfur region witnessed a bloody war that began in 2003 between the Bashir regime and rebels belonging to ethnic minorities, killing 300,000 people and displacing 2.5 million others, according to the United Nations.