Khartoum, Sudan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24 News – At least 56 civilians died during battles between Sudanese paramilitaries and the regular army, sparking global calls for calm in a country which has seen decades of unrest.

Sudan’s military launched air strikes on a paramilitary force’s base near the capital Khartoum following clashes in which scores of combatants and at least 56 civilians were killed. The army struck a base belonging to the government’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the city of Omdurman, close to Khartoum, eyewitnesses said late on Saturday.

Sudan’s armed forces dismissed any possibility of negotiations or dialogue. There will be “no negotiations or dialogue until the dissolution of the paramilitary RSF,” the armed forces said on its Facebook page.

The clashes capped months of heightened tensions between the armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces group. Those tensions had delayed a deal with political parties to get the country back to its short-lived transition to democracy, which was derailed by an October 2021 military coup.

The fighting erupted early Saturday between army units loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF, headed by deputy leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. The sound of heavy firing could be heard throughout the day across the capital, Khartoum, and the nearby city of Omdurman, where the military and the RSF have amassed tens of thousands of troops since the coup. Both the army and the RSF claimed to have control over Sudan’s airport and other key locations.

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States held a phone call on Saturday to discuss the ongoing situation in Sudan, according to Saudi’s state news agency. The ministers called for a halt to military escalation and a return to a framework agreement between civilian political forces and the military in Sudan, the agency added.