Fighting between two of Sudan's most powerful military leaders has broken out after one accused the other of an attempted coup to seize control of the African country, home to nearly 50 million.
Firefights soon erupted across the capital city of Khartoum, population 5.2 million, leaving hundreds dead and the international airport “unworkable.”
Multiple attempts to bring about a ceasefire have failed.
Clashes ignited over the weekend when the country's de facto leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, of rebelling against the country's military dictatorship.
Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the RSF — and Sudan's vice president — accused al-Burhan of leading “an Islamist gang.” Neither man appears willing to back down as the likelihood of a civil war grows.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to save its diplomats at the embassy in Khartoum, the U.S. government has moved special operations forces to the neighboring country of Djibouti.
Contingency plans are reportedly being drawn up to “facilitate the departure of U.S. Embassy personnel from Sudan,” a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.
BBC News has more on why the fighting there matters:
There's a reason why the fighting that has erupted there over the past week is ringing so many international alarm bells. Sudan is not only huge – the third largest country in Africa – it also stretches across an unstable and geopolitically vital region.
Whatever happens militarily or politically in the capital, Khartoum, ripples across some of the most fragile parts of the continent.
The country straddles the Nile River, making the nation's fate of almost existential importance; downstream, to water-hungry Egypt, and upstream, to land-locked Ethiopia with its ambitious hydro-electric plans that now affect the river's flow.
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Trouble in Sudan's western Darfur region almost inevitably spills over into neighbouring Chad, and vice versa. Weapons and fighters from coup-prone Chad, and from the war-torn Central African Republic, often flow freely across the region's porous borders. Much the same has proved true with Libya, to the north-west.
Sudan's border to the south with the newly-created country of South Sudan is also fragile.
South Sudan gained independence in 2011 following a bloody civil war that killed up to 2.5 million civilians.
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