<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>The UN's top aid official was in Saudi Arabia on Sunday for ceasefire talks between Sudan's warring generals, as concern grows for the humanitarian situation at the start of a fourth week of gun battles and air strikes in the Sudanese capital.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Multiple truce deals have been eclared, without effect, since fighting erupted between army and paramilitary forces on April 15 in the poverty-stricken country with a history of political instability.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fierce combat since then has killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians, wounded thousands and sparked multiple warnings of a "catastrophic" humanitarian crisis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 100,000 people have already fled the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ahmed al-Amin, a resident of the Haj Yousif district in northeastern Khartoum, on Sunday told AFP he "saw fighter jets flying above our heads and heard the sounds of explosions and anti-aircraft" fire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Across the Red Sea in the Saudi city of Jeddah, talks were underway aiming for a ceasefire that could push efforts to bring humanitarian aid to the besieged population.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those unable to flee face dire shortages of water, food, medicines and other staples.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even before the war began about one-third of Sudan's people required humanitarian assistance, the UN said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The fighting has seen aid workers killed, health facilities attacked, and the UN projects that the number of "acutely food insecure people" in Sudan could increase by between two and 2.5 million if the war is prolonged.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Analysts expect that it will be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Gunfire everywhere' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Martin Griffiths, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, was in Jeddah Sunday "and the purpose of his visit is to engage in humanitarian issues related to Sudan," spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Port Sudan last week, Griffiths said he had been informed by the UN's World Food Programme that six trucks bringing aid to the Darfur region had been "looted en route".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He called for security guarantees "clearly given by militaries, to protect humanitarian systems to deliver".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There was no indication that Griffiths would play a direct role in the Saudi discussions about a possible ceasefire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The generals leading the warring parties have said little about the talks being held in Jeddah since Saturday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Thursday US President Joe Biden signed an executive order that broadens authority to impose sanctions over Sudan's conflict. It did not name potential targets.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Army spokesman Brigadier General Nabil Abdalla said the Jeddah talks were on how a truce "can be correctly implemented to serve the humanitarian side", while Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries, only said on Twitter that he welcomed the technical discussions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Riyadh and Washington have supported the "pre-negotiation talks" and urged the belligerents to "get actively involved".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit expressed his support Sunday for the "indirect negotiations" in order to prevent "an escalation of the current conflict" into a prolonged war "that divides Sudan into warring regions."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the same meeting of the bloc in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry warned of "a slide into a worse and more dangerous security situation" affecting the region.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Heavyweights in the pan-Arab bloc are divided on Sudan. Egypt solidly supports the regular army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the UAE is in favour of the RSF, according to experts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Egypt, to which more than 60,000 refugees have fled, announced Shoukry will head Monday to South Sudan and Chad, both of which also border Sudan and have themselves received tens of thousands of people escaping the war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thousands have also crossed into neighbouring Ethiopia, most of them third-country nationals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is my second war that I flee," Syrian refugee Salam Kanhoush told AFP at the Ethiopian border town of Metema.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Women carrying infants and donkey carts laden with baggage converge on the bustling, dusty crossing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Our safety and life comes first," Eritrean refugee Sara told AFP, asking to be identified only by her first name. "We can't be thinking of the things that we have left behind" in Sudan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The one thing they were relieved to abandon was the violence. Muhammad Yusuf, a Sudanese refugee, described "gunfire everywhere" and "expecting to be a victim at anytime."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'No apparent consensus' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hopes for international efforts to silence the guns are modest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The lowest common denominator of the international community is a cessation of hostilities," said Sudan researcher Aly Verjee at Sweden's University of Gothenburg. "But there is no apparent consensus on what to do beyond that initial objective."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Burhan and Daglo jointly staged Sudan's latest coup in 2021.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That putsch derailed a transition to democracy after the ouster two years earlier of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir following mass pro-democracy protests.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bashir had unleashed the Janjaweed militia in response to an uprising in Sudan's Darfur region in 2003, leading to war crimes charges against him and others.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The RSF are descended from the Janjaweed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since their coup, Burhan and Daglo have fallen out in a bitter power struggle, lastly over a plan to integrate the RSF into the army.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At least 700 people have been killed in the fighting, which has spread beyond Khartoum to Darfur and elsewhere, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. The Sudanese doctors' union said 479 of the dead were civilians. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>