Sudan: Fighters Goes On Rampage In Darfur Amid Extended Fragile Truce

Armed fighters rampaged through a city in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur on Thursday, battling each other and looting shops and homes, residents said.

Despite the extension of a tenuous cease-fire between Sudan's two top generals, whose power struggle has claimed hundreds of lives, the violence continues.

The chaos in the Darfur city of Genena served as a warning sign for how the struggle between rival generals for power in Khartoum was spreading to other parts of Sudan.

Late on Thursday, the cease-fire was extended for another 72 hours by the two sides. 

While the fighting has not stopped, the cease-fire has created enough of a lull for thousands of foreigners to be evacuated by land, air, and sea, as well as for tens of thousands of Sudanese to flee to safer areas.

For the first time since the military and a rival paramilitary force started fighting on April 15, the cease-fire has significantly lessened fighting in Khartoum and its neighbouring city Omdurman. Since then, residential neighbourhoods have become battlegrounds.

Generals Abdel Fattah Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces both declared that they were in favour of extending the cease-fire. 

However, late on Thursday, gunfire and explosions could be heard in at least one Khartoum neighbourhood.