UN pressures Sudan’s warring generals after looting aid

U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said he hoped to hold face-to-face meetings with Sudan’s warring parties within two to three days to make sure they would keep aid convoys delivering aid.

Griffiths told Reuters in a telephone interview from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that the meeting could be held in the capital Khartoum or elsewhere, after visiting Port Sudan to plan a major rescue operation.

“It’s important to me that we discuss this face-to-face because we need it to be a public, responsible moment,” he said.

Fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which broke out on April 15, threatens to spread a humanitarian catastrophe to other countries, the United Nations has warned. Sudan said on Tuesday that 550 people had been killed and 4,926 others wounded in the clashes so far.

Airstrikes were heard in Khartoum and the neighboring cities of Omdurman and Bahri on Wednesday, even though the two sides had agreed to extend a series of shaky and fractured truces for another seven days from Thursday. In Khartoum, millions of people are still trying to escape open warfare between the army, which uses airstrikes and heavy artillery, and the Rapid Support Forces, which penetrate deep into residential areas.

With food and fuel supplies dwindling, most hospitals were out of service and many areas were without power or water.

With international mediators urging peace talks, Sudan’s military said it would send envoys to talks with the leaders of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti.

Aid is being held up in the country of 46 million people, about a third of whom already depend on relief aid.

Earlier, Griffiths said the U.N. World Food Program had told him six trucks en route to the western region of Darfur had been ransacked despite security.

In an interview with Reuters, Griffith said he spoke by phone on Wednesday with army leader Abdul Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces commander Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hme. pedicle) call and tell them that specific assistance corridors and airlift operations are required.

“Our operational requirements now are very clear about what commitment we need from them,” he said.

In Nairobi, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the international community must tell the two leaders that the situation was unacceptable. He said the two generals must face pressure to stop the fighting, start a dialogue and allow a transition to a civilian government.

Dafallah Alhaj, Burhan’s special envoy, said in Cairo that the military had accepted the talks but that there would be no face-to-face discussions with the RSF and that communication would be through a mediator.

South Sudan said the two sides had agreed to a ceasefire and sent representatives to the talks. In a tweet on Wednesday, Hemedti said he was committed to “opening and securing safe corridors.” The RSF later claimed in a Facebook post that its forces “still control 90 percent of the three cities of Khartoum” and said it confirmed its “full commitment to the declared humanitarian ceasefire”.

Some 100,000 people have fled Sudan for neighboring countries with little food and water, the United Nations said.

The conflict has spread to Darfur, where the RSF has emerged from tribal militias that have fought alongside government forces to crush insurgents in a war dating back two decades.

Two years ago, the army and Reporters Without Borders joined forces in a coup and shared power as part of an internationally-backed transition to free elections and a civilian government.