Curfew declared in Sudan’s second biggest city Port Sudan: Statement

A curfew was declared on Tuesday in Sudan’s second biggest city, Port Sudan, from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. local time (2100 GMT to 0300 GMT), according to a statement by the governor of the Red Sea State, where the city that houses Sudan’s main port is located.

On Tuesday, the state’s security committee said it had caught several “rebellious” sleeper cells that it said had sneaked in from outside and warned that they were planning activities.

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“We thank the citizens of Red Sea state for their total cooperation and for immediately reporting the presence of these rebellious elements and their agents within their neighborhoods,” it said, without specifying their identity.

The committee later extended a state of emergency and declared a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. in Port Sudan.

The conflict erupted on April 15 over internationally backed plans for a transition to elections under a civilian government.

Leaders of the army and the RSF had held the top positions on Sudan’s ruling council since former leader Omar al-Bashir was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019.

They staged a coup in 2021 as they were due to hand leadership of the council to civilians, before falling out over the chain of command and restructuring of the RSF under the planned transition.

Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan appeared in a video on Tuesday greeting troops. He said that the army had agreed to the ceasefire extension to ease citizens’ access to services.

“The army hasn’t used its full deadly power, but it will be forced to do so if the enemy does not obey or listen to the voice of reason,” he said in a statement.

UN children’s agency UNICEF said more than 13.6 million children in Sudan, a country of 49 million people, were in urgent need of lifesaving humanitarian support.

The UN World Food Program, which expects up to 2.5 million people in Sudan to slip into hunger in coming months, said that 17,000 metric tons of food had been looted since the conflict began.

WFP said on Monday that it had begun to distribute food in parts of the capital for the first time since the outbreak of fighting.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk warned on Tuesday that fighting in Khartoum, which has spread to the war-weary Darfur region, could take on an “inter-ethnic dimension which would be terrible.”

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