Sudan fighting mars shaky truce as ex-regime members flee prison

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese war crimes suspect, part of the Islamist regime ousted in 2019, has escaped jail as heavy battles rocked the country on Wednesday, heightening fears for a fragile ceasefire.

On the second full day of a three-day truce, witnesses reported “heavy air strikes” in East Nile, east of the capital, and “a huge explosion in the direction of a paramilitary camp”. Warplanes flew over northern suburbs of Khartoum, drawing heavy anti-aircraft fire from the paramilitaries, witnesses told AFP.

In southern Khartoum, machinegun fire was reported near one of the homes owned by paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who has led the heavily armed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) into war against the armed forces, under army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

In the chaos -- which has killed hundreds, sparked a mass flight of terrified foreigners and Sudanese citizens, and deepened a humanitarian crisis -- Ahmed Harun, a leading figure of the regime of deposed strongman Omar al-Bashir, said late Tuesday he and others had escaped prison.

Harun is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in connection with the Bashir regime´s unleashing of Janjaweed militias against non-Arab ethnic minorities in Darfur.

Beginning in 2003, that conflict left around 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN. Daglo´s RSF are descended from the Janjaweed. After being trapped in the empty Kober jail in “the crossfire of this current battle”, Harun said in a recorded TV address that he and fellow ex-regime members had taken “our protection in our own hands”.

The ICC prosecutor´s office said it was following developments but added there was no independent confirmation of the Kober detainees´ status. Since fighting broke out on April 15, multiple foreign governments from all corners of the globe have organised road convoys, aircraft and ships to get thousands of their nationals out of Sudan, and citizens have fled overland to neighbouring countries.

The UN said it has “received reports of tens of thousands of people arriving in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan”. According to Bankole Adeoye, the African Union´s commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, continued fighting will increase the “risk of regional conflagration and internationalisation of the conflict”.

Bashir, 79, was ousted by the military in 2019 in the wake of mass pro-democracy protests. He had himself been held in Kober prison. But the army said Bashir and others had been transferred to a military hospital before fighting erupted “due to their health conditions”, and that they remained under judicial police guard.