ARMED fighters rampaged through a main city in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur today.

The warring sides battled each other, looting shops and homes, residents said. 

The violence came despite a fragile three-day truce between Sudan’s two top generals whose power struggle has killed hundreds.

The mayhem in the Darfur city of Geneina pointed to how the rival generals’ fight for control in the capital, Khartoum, was spiralling into violence in other parts of Sudan.

The ceasefire has brought a significant easing of fighting in Khartoum and its neighbouring city Omdurman for the first time since the military and a rival paramilitary force began fighting on April 15, turning residential neighbourhoods into battlegrounds.

An east African initiative was pressing to extend the truce, which was set to run out Thursday night, for another three days. 

The head of the military, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, said that he had accepted the proposal, but there was no immediate word from his rival, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Even in the capital, fighting has not stopped, residents said. In the western region of Darfur, residents said that the violence was escalating to its worst yet.

Darfur has been a battleground between the military and the paramilitary RSF since the conflict began in mid-month. In the city of Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur, one of the region’s five provinces.

Residents said that the fighting was now dragging in tribal militias, tapping into longtime antagonisms between communities identified as Arab and those of east or central African origin.

In the early 2000s, Darfur was the scene of an insurgency by African tribes which had long complained of discrimination. 

The Khartoum government responded with a brutal military campaign that rights groups have called genocidal, deploying Arab militias known as the Janjaweed who were accused of widespread killings, rapes and atrocities. The Janjaweed later evolved into the RSF.

The violence in Geneina, a city of around a half a million people, has spiralled out of control. 

“The attacks come from all directions,” said Amany, a Geneina resident who asked to withhold her family name for her safety. 

Almost all of Geneina’s medical facilities have been out of service for days and the sole hospital still operating can’t be reached because of fighting, he said.

At least 512 people have been killed in Sudan since the fighting began on April 15, with another 4,200 wounded, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry.