Sudan’s Bashir and allies released from jail, Khartoum combat flares

DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) – Gunshots and explosions rang out in Sudan’s capital on its western outskirts on Wednesday, eroding a truce amid the collapse of basic services, dwindling food supplies and the opening of a prison. who let out the allies of an imprisoned ex-autocrat.

With the conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) showing no signs of abating, the army said former president Omar al-Bashir had been transferred to a military hospital before hostilities began on 15 April.

He said Bashir was transferred from prison with 30 former members of his regime, including Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, who along with the former president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes for atrocities during an earlier conflict in the Darfur region.

Bashir’s whereabouts came into question after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, announced on Tuesday that he had left Kober prison in Khartoum with other former officials. Haroun is also wanted by the ICC on dozens of war crimes charges.

Thousands of convicted criminals, including some on death row, were held in the large prison, along with high- and low-ranking officials of the Bashir regime, which was ousted four years ago.

Sudanese authorities and RSF exchanged accusations over the release of inmates, and police said armed paramilitaries had stormed five prisons over the weekend, killing several guards and opening the doors.

RSF blamed the authorities for letting Haroun and others out.

The release of convicted criminals added to a growing sense of lawlessness in Khartoum, where residents have reported worsening insecurity, with widespread looting and gangs roaming the streets.

“This war, launched by the ousted regime, will lead the country to collapse,” said the Sudan Freedom and Change Forces, a political group leading an internationally-backed plan to transition to civilian rule derailed by the outbreak of fighting. .

Bashir rose to power in a 1989 military coup and was overthrown in a popular uprising in 2019. Two years later, the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with the support of the RSF, seized power in a coup.

The current conflict between the army and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo erupted in part over disagreements over how quickly the RSF would be integrated into the army under the planned transition to civilian rule.

The ICC in The Hague charged Bashir with genocide and Haroun with organizing militias to attack civilians in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. The ICC declined to comment on the prison transfers of Bashir, Haroun and Hussein.

TRUCE REINFORCEMENTS

The new battles broke out in Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s twin cities, where the army was fighting RSF reinforcements brought in from other regions of Sudan, a Reuters reporter said.

A shell hit the Al-Roumi medical center in Omdurman on Tuesday and exploded inside, injuring 13 people, a hospital official said.

The army has accused the RSF of using a three-day truce to reinforce itself with men and weapons. The truce was to end Thursday night.

Thanks to the ceasefire, the fighting between soldiers of the RSF army was more moderate in the center of Khartoum.

The fighting has turned residential areas into battlefields. Air and artillery strikes have killed at least 459 people, injured more than 4,000, destroyed hospitals and limited food distribution in a nation where a third of its 46 million people depend on humanitarian aid.

The UN special envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the ceasefire “seems to hold in some parts so far.”

But he said neither side was willing to “negotiate seriously, which suggests that both sides think it is possible to secure a military victory over the other.”

Foreign powers have thousands evacuated of diplomats and private citizens in recent days, including 1,674 from 54 countries aided by Saudi Arabia.

Sudanese along with citizens of neighboring countries have also left en masse. More than 10,000 people have crossed into Egypt from Sudan in the past five days, Cairo authorities said, adding to some 20,000 who have entered Chad. Others have fled to South Sudan and Ethiopia, despite the difficult conditions there.

The first Turkish civilians returned to Turkey from Sudan on Wednesday, having first arrived in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa by land from Khartoum.

Several more flights were expected on Wednesday to evacuate the remaining Turkish nationals who had crossed into Ethiopia from Sudan.

Reporting by Mehmet Emin Caliskan, Omer Berberoglu, Deniz Uyar in Istanbul and Michelle Nichols in New York and Tala Ramadan in Dubai; Written by Michael Georgy; Edited by Simon Cameron-Moore

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