Khartoum ,23June( Darfur24)Residents of the city of Kadugli in southwest Sudan began fleeing the city on Thursday as tensions escalated between the army and a powerful rebel group, threatening to open another area of conflict in the country’s ongoing war, witnesses said.
Mobilisation around Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan state, and an escalation of fighting in Darfur come after nearly 10 weeks of fighting focused in the capital, Khartoum, between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The United States and Saudi Arabia adjourned talks they had been facilitating in Jeddah, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee said at a congressional hearing in Washington.
“The format is not succeeding in the way that we want,” she said, after a series of violated ceasefire agreements.
Since mid-April the war has uprooted more than 2.5 million people from their homes and threatened to destabilise neighbouring countries suffering from a combination of conflict, poverty and economic pressures.
In the fighting between the army and the RSF, army air strikes on Thursday morning hit areas of southern Khartoum and Omdurman, and the RSF responded with anti-aircraft weaponry, residents said.