Sudan: Warring Sides Agree To Seven-Day Ceasefire Starting Monday

Saudi Arabia and the United States have brokered a seven-day ceasefire between Sudan's warring factions making the two generals agree to a cease-fire that will start on Monday. 

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's representative and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, both signed the cease-fire agreement in Jeddah, where they also pledged not to seek any military advantage before the cease-fire's start on Monday at 9:45 p.m. local time.

"It will be automatically renewed until we reach a permanent cease-fire through mechanisms we will discuss in the coming days to achieve confidence between the parties and for more humanitarian services for the Sudanese citizen," said Ali Jafar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Sudan.

"This Sudanese blood is precious to you more than anyone else, and you know the importance of saving it," said Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister after the deal was reached on Saturday.

"I hope this agreement will be a hope for the Sudanese people, especially the people of Khartoum, in which they can finish their humanitarian services in the seven days and hopefully, it will be more," he added. 

Since the violence started five weeks ago, numerous cease-fires have been declared and then promptly broken.

Even after the announcement of the most recent truce, airstrikes and artillery exchanges on Saturday jolted Khartoum and armed men ransacked the Qatari embassy.

More than a million individuals have been forced from their homes as a result of the violence, the majority of them were civilians.

In Sudan, the third-largest nation in Africa, where one in three people already depended on aid before the fighting started, the humanitarian crisis is getting worse.

The news of the ceasefire on Saturday came two weeks after the initial meeting of the warring generals' representatives in Jeddah.

By May 11, they had agreed to uphold humanitarian standards and permit desperately needed aid to enter.

Although it fell short of a truce, UN assistance head Martin Griffiths said on Thursday that there had been "important and egregious" violations of that accord.