Sudan's Al Bashir 'moved from jail to hospital before fighting'

Questions abound over whereabouts of deposed president after ex-minister said he left prison with other former officials

Sudan's former president Omar Al Bashir in 2019. AP

Follow the latest Sudan updates here

Sudan's toppled president Omar Al Bashir was moved from Kober prison to a military hospital in Khartoum before heavy fighting broke out there on April 15, the army said on Wednesday.

Al Bashir and 30 others are in police custody at the hospital on the recommendation of staff at Kober prison, where he was being detained, it said.

The whereabouts of Al Bashir came under scrutiny after a former minister in his government, Ahmed Haroun, said on Tuesday he had left the prison with other former officials.

Both Al Bashir and Haroun are wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged atrocities in Darfur. Haroun told Sudan's Tayba TV that the officials were ready to appear before the judiciary whenever it was functioning.

Sudan's interior ministry also said that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke into five prisons and freed inmates there between April 21 and 24, including Kober prison.

Fighting flared in Sudan late on Tuesday despite a ceasefire declaration by the warring factions as more people fled Khartoum in the chaos.

The Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire beginning on Tuesday after negotiations mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia.

It follows reports that inmates at the prison, which held former president Al Bashir and other ex-officials, had escaped earlier this week.

Sudanese citizens and foreigners fled the capital on Tuesday as fighting followed a three-day truce brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia.

“The pause was not fully upheld, with attacks on headquarters, attempts to gain ground, air strikes, and explosions in different areas of the capital,” UN Special Representative Volker Perthes told the Security Council on Tuesday.

Mr Perthes said he maintained contact with both generals at war, army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, Gen Mohamed Dagalo, who commands the RSF.

“There is yet no unequivocal sign that either is ready to seriously negotiate,” Mr Perthes said.

A series of short ceasefires in the past week have either failed or brought only short pauses in fighting between forces loyal to the country's two top generals.

At least 450 people, including civilians and fighters, have been killed, and more than 4,000 wounded in the fighting, the UN said, citing Sudan’s Health Ministry.

Aid agencies are concerned at the humanitarian situation in a country reliant on outside help.

Calls for negotiations to end the crisis in Africa’s third-largest nation have been ignored. For many Sudanese, the departure of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners and the closure of embassies are terrifying signs that international powers expect the mayhem to get worse.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that the power struggle between rival generals and their military forces was not only putting Sudan's future at risk, but was also “lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades”.

He urged the Sudanese military and the RSF “to silence the guns” immediately.

“The conflict will not, and must not, be resolved on the battlefield,” Mr Guterres told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council late on Tuesday.

Thousands of Sudanese have fled Khartoum and its neighbouring city of Omdurman. Bus stations in the capital were packed on Tuesday morning with people who had spent the night there in hopes of getting on a departing bus.

The 72-hour ceasefire was announced by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with the rival forces saying on Tuesday that they would observe the truce.

But fighting continued, with explosions, gunfire and the roar of fighter planes overhead around the capital region.

“They stop only when they run out of ammunition,” Omdurman resident Amin Ishaq said.

Al Roumy hospital in Omdurman said it suspended services after it was hit by a shell Tuesday.

“They don’t respect ceasefires,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, a senior figure in the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, a group that monitors casualties.