Some 450 students were evacuated this Sunday from the Kamboni school in the center of Khartoum, where they remained trapped for more than 24 hours after the start of clashes between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries.
The Kamboni school management said, quoted by the Efe agency, that “all the students of the school”, some 450 boys and girls of different ages, had left school and were sent with their families.
The evacuation of the teaching unit was only possible after the Armed Forces and the RSF (in its acronym in English) agreed to stop the fighting and open humanitarian corridors for three hours, a commitment reached at the proposal of the United Nations.
The temporary cessation of hostilities came into effect at 4:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. Lisbon local time) and ended at 7:00 p.m. local time this Sunday.
According to the school, “authorities responded to the distress call and provided a safe path to ensure the safety of the students, who were trapped inside the school for more than 24 hours.”
During the recess, according to Efe, some clashes continued in the Khartoum Operations Command area, far from the urban centers, but the residential areas experienced a tense calm that allowed residents to leave the places where they were trapped to look for food and water.
RSF paramilitaries clashed with the Sudanese army on Saturday morning in Khartoum, but the violence spread to other parts of the country.
In two days of fighting in Sudan, at least 56 civilians have been killed and nearly 600 – also among the warring parties – injured, a network of doctors in Sudan reported. Among the fatalities are three employees of the World Food Program, which has suspended its activities in the country.
However, these figures do not include casualties in the troubled western region of Darfur, where there is heavy fighting in Al Fasher and Nyala, as well as Al Obeid in North Kordofan state, due to difficulties of movement in those areas. .
The clashes are part of a power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the Armed Forces, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the RSF.
The two generals are former allies who orchestrated the October 2021 military coup that halted Sudan’s brief transition to democracy.
In recent months, internationally supported negotiations have revived hopes for an orderly transition to democracy.
However, the growing tensions between Al-Burhan and Dagalo ended up delaying an agreement with the political parties.
In the capital and Omdurman, clashes were reported today near the military headquarters, Khartoum International Airport and the headquarters of state television.
Both the army and the RSF claimed to control strategic locations in Khartoum and other areas, but these claims could not yet be independently verified.
Sudan, with more than 49 million inhabitants, is located on the shores of the Red Sea, which separates the country from Saudi Arabia.
It has land borders with Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan.
Source: TSF
