EU will keep pushing for settlement in Sudan

LUXEMBOURG - The European Union will keep working for a political settlement to the conflict in Sudan despite the recent evacuation of diplomatic staff and other EU citizens from the country, the bloc's top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday.

"We have to continue pushing for a political settlement. We cannot afford that Sudan implodes because it would send shockwaves throughout the whole of Africa," Borrell said before a meeting with EU foreign ministers.

Borrell added that the EU's ambassador to Sudan was still in the country.

"The captain is the last one leaving the ship. He is in Sudan but no longer in Khartoum," Borrell said.

Borrell tweeted he had spoken with the rival commanders, urging an immediate ceasefire to protect civilians and the evacuation of EU citizens.

oreign governments evacuated diplomats, staff and others from Sudan on Sunday as rival generals battled for a ninth day with no sign of a truce that had been declared for a major Muslim holiday.

While world powers like the U.S. and Britain airlifted their diplomats from the capital of Khartoum, Sudanese desperately sought to flee the chaos. Many risked dangerous roads to cross the northern border into Egypt.

“My family — my mother, my siblings and my nephews — are on the road from Sudan to Cairo through Aswan,” prominent Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Abual-Ala wrote on Facebook.

Fighting raged in Omdurman, a city across the Nile River from Khartoum, residents said, despite a hoped-for cease-fire to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

“We did not see such a truce,” Amin al-Tayed said from his home near state TV headquarters in Omdurman, adding that heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rocked the city.

Over 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed and over 3,700 wounded in fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF said the armed forces unleashed airstrikes on the upscale neighbourhood of Kafouri, north of Khartoum. There was no immediate army comment.