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US citizens are frisked by US soldiers before boarding in Port Sudan, Sunday, April 30, 2023. The Sudanese army and a rival paramilitary force have agreed to send representatives to negotiate, the United Nations envoy said Monday, May 1, 2023. to Sudan. (AP Photo/Smowal Abdalla)
CAIRO (AP) — The generals fighting in Sudan have agreed to send representatives to negotiate, possibly in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations’ top representative told The Associated Press on Monday, though the two sides were still fighting in the capital despite another three-day extension on the fragile ceasefire.
The talks would start with a “stable and reliable” ceasefire with “national and international” monitors, Volker Perthes said. Over the past week, a series of temporary truces has reduced fighting in only some areas, while intense fighting in others they have continued to drive civilians from their homes and plunge the country into a humanitarian crisis.
Perthes cautioned that the logistics of the talks were still being worked out. So far only the army had announced that it was ready to join the negotiations, with no comment from its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group. A negotiation would be the first advance since the violence began on April 15 between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the FAR of General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Some 530 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed since then, with some 4,500 injured, according to the Sudanese Ministry of Health.
The United States, for its part, conducted its first evacuation of American civilians from Sudan. Supervised by US military drones, a group of Americans made the perilous road trip between the capital Khartoum and the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. On Monday, a US Navy fast transport ship brought 308 evacuees from Port Sudan to the Saudi port of Jeddah, according to Saudi officials.
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Associated Press writer Nick El Hajj in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.
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