Sudan crisis drives growing exodus as warring generals said to agree "in principle" to 7-day truce
South Sudan's government said Tuesday that the two generals tearing neighboring Sudan apart as they battle for control of the country had agreed "in principle" to a seven-day ceasefire beginning on Thursday, May 4. According to a statement released by South Sudan's Foreign Ministry, the commanders of both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the country's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group agreed to name representatives to peace talks as part of the deal.
The news may spark hope of a more widespread and durable halt to the violence that has plagued Sudan since the commanders — former allies who jointly derailed their country's tentative steps toward democracy by colluding in a 2019 coup — started battling each other on April 15.
The statement from the Foreign Ministry of South Sudan, which shares a long border with Sudan to the north, said South Sudanese President Salva Kiir had "urged the leaders to name their representatives and propose a date to commence the talks as soon as possible."
Those talks can't come soon enough for the east African nation's beleaguered people. Several shorter ceasefires, including one still technically in effect Tuesday, have calmed but not at all quelled the violence between the factions led by army commander Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The United Nations has blamed more than 500 deaths on the fighting, many of them civilians, and said that's likely to be a low estimate as the chaotic situation on the ground has made it difficult to get a reliable tally.
Hundreds of thousands of people, both Sudanese and foreigners, have fled or are still trying to flee for their lives, and the United Nations was still bracing for many more to follow.
The conflict has already displaced more than 330,000 people within the country and more than 100,000 others have escaped into neighboring countries, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said Tuesday. The agency is planning for the possibility that the conflict could spur more than 800,000 people to flee Sudan as refugees.
The United States got its diplomats and their families out of battle-scarred Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, relatively early in the crisis, but it wasn't until the past weekend — days after other countries orchestrated high-risk extractions — that American civilians started escaping from Sudan. About 2,000 U.S. nationals have been spirited out of Sudan so far, officials said over the weekend, most of them on ships from Port Sudan to Saudi Arabia.
Here is an overview of the exodus:
The U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said an estimated 334,053 people had been internally displaced by the fighting, with figures going up to April 28. Displacement has been reported from 14 of Sudan's 18 states.
"About 72%, roughly 240,000 of these new internal displacements were reported in West and South Darfur alone," spokesman Paul Dillon told reporters in Geneva. The number of people displaced in the last two weeks "exceeds all conflict-related displacement in Sudan in 2022", he added.
Sudan counted around 3.7 million internally displaced persons before the conflict started, mostly in the volatile Darfur region.
Sudan also hosted 1.13 million refugees before the conflict — one of the largest refugee populations in Africa.
Of those, 800,000 are South Sudanese, and 136,000 are from Eritrea. There are also 93,000 Syrians, 72,000 Ethiopians and 24,000 from the Central African Republic (CAR).
"Over 100,000 refugees are estimated to be among those who have now fled Sudan to neighboring countries," UNHCR spokeswoman Olga Sarrado told reporters in Geneva.
The agency said the most significant cross border movements so far have been Sudanese refugees arriving in Chad and Egypt, and South Sudanese refugees in Sudan returning to their home country.
UNHCR said 40,000 refugees plus a further 2,000 third-country nationals had crossed Sudan's northern border to Egypt.
Refugees making it to the two border crossings with Egypt have described grim, confusing circumstances to CBS News. Having fled with few belongings, food, water or cash on the treacherous journeys, and having paid small fortunes for scarce bus tickets out of the war zone amid crippling fuel shortages, many have shown up at the border without proper documentation, and with little idea where to go next.
The looming rainy season will make it harder to reach Sudan's border areas with aid.
More than 400,000 Sudanese refugees are already hosted across 13 camps and among local communities in eastern Chad.
UNHCR said an estimated 27,275 people had crossed the southern border into South Sudan.
Of these, nearly 21,000 are South Sudanese returnees, nearly 2,700 are refugees from Sudan, with the rest being third-country nationals.
Around 8,900 refugees are thought to have crossed into Ethiopia from Sudan, according to UNHCR. Of those, nearly 7,300 are third-country nationals, with the rest either refugees from Sudan or Ethiopian returnees.
