Third Truce Fails To Hold As Hundreds Flee War-Torn Sudan

Sudanese and foreigners streamed out of the capital of Khartoum and other battle zones as fighting on Tuesday shook a new three-day truce brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Since the conflict between the forces loyal to the nation's top two generals started on April 15, millions of Sudanese have been trapped in their homes.

Tens of thousands of heavily armed combatants from the military and its adversary, the Rapid Support Forces, are engaged in combat in densely populated residential areas, putting an end to normal civilian life.

The Associated Press was able to capture video of empty streets and smoke rising over the city of Khartoum.

Since the fighting started, there have been over 420 fatalities and over 3,700 injuries, including at least 273 civilians.

Although it has appeared that the military is winning the battle in Khartoum, the RSF still holds control over several districts in the capital and the nearby city of Omdurman, in addition to having several sizable strongholds all over the nation.

The fighting that has raged between forces loyal to the nation's two top generals since April 15 has been the subject of a series of brief ceasefires over the past week that have either failed completely or only brought about intermittent lulls.

There have been enough lulls to allow for the dramatic air and land evacuations of hundreds of foreign nationals, which continued on Tuesday.

However, they haven't provided any relief for the millions of Sudanese who are caught in the middle of the conflict and are scrambling to find food, shelter, and medical attention as looters and gunfire devastate their neighbourhoods.

Many aid organisations were forced to halt operations, and dozens of hospitals were forced to close in a nation where a third of the 46 million people already required humanitarian aid.

The United Nations refugee agency announced that it was preparing for the possibility of tens of thousands of people escaping into nearby nations.

Calls for negotiations to resolve the crisis in the third-largest country in Africa have gone unanswered.

The departure of diplomats, aid workers, and other foreigners, as well as the closure of embassies, are frightful indications that foreign powers anticipate the chaos to only get worse for many Sudanese.