CAIRO, April 18. /TASS/. Warplanes of the Sudanese armed forces attacked the positions of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the city center of the capital Khartoum on Tuesday, Al Arabiya reported.
According to military sources, "the army’s combat planes dropped bombs on RSF positions near the Palace of the Republic," the president’s official residence in the heart of the Sudanese capital. No information about damage or casualties is available as of now.
Earlier, the sides failed to comply with the terms of a ceasefire supposed to take effect at 6:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. Moscow time) on Tuesday. Clashes between the military and the RSF erupted again in downtown Khartoum past that time. According to Al Hadath television, combat planes were spotted above the city.
Fighting with the use of heavy weaponry still rages outside the General Staff building in Khartoum’s city center. Both sides issued statements accusing each other of violating the ceasefire’s terms. Al Hadath quoted a UN mission official as saying that so far, neither of the sides has shown that it is ready to observe the truce or seek mediation.
On April 16, the army of Sudan agreed to the UN's proposal to keep humanitarian corridors open every day for three hours. The Rapid Support Forces, in turn, said that they were ready to observe a daily humanitarian pause for four hours. Both sides reserved the right to respond to enemy provocations. In reality, however, the promises have not been kept.
The situation in Sudan has escalated due to disagreement between army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who also heads the Sovereign Council (the country's governing body), and his deputy in the council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), the head of the rapid support force. On the morning of April 15, clashes broke out between the two forces near a military base in the city of Merowe and in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. According to the latest reports, over 180 people have been killed and more than 1,800 wounded since the start of the hostilities.