The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has urged the international community to continue pushing for a lasting ceasefire in Sudan, Khartoum.

A civil war between two rival factions of the military government of Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces under the Janjaweed leader, Hemedti, began during Ramadan on April 15, 2023.

Guterres said the devastating war in Sudan has thrown half the population into a humanitarian freefall. He asked the warring factions in Sudan to work for peace and agree to end the conflict.

“Thousands have been killed, and 18 million people are facing the threat of famine. I urge the international community to intensify its push for peace and the warring sides to agree on a lasting ceasefire,” the UN Secretary-General SG said in a message shared on his official x-platform on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, the United States imposed sanctions against two commanders of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as rights groups and the United Nations warned that deadly violence in the North Darfur region was escalating.

The US Department of the Treasury said that the sanctions targeted the RSF’s Central Darfur commander, Ali Yagoub Gibril, and Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed, a major general who heads the group’s operational planning.

In February 2024, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni held talks with visiting delegates from Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council in Kampala and appealed to the warring factions in the country to find means of ending the ongoing war and restoring peace.

The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have been fighting for the last 12 months, leading to more than 15,000 deaths and displacing about 10 million people.