Churches across Sudan have been targeted in widespread violence, particularly in the capital Khartoum, which broke out between the official Sudan Armed Forces the and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April.
Representatives of the warring parties agreed to a tentative seven-day ceasefire on Monday, 22 May, at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, after the fighting had left an estimated 1,000 dead and displaced almost one million people. However, previous ceasefires have collapsed and there are reports of continued gunfire in Khartoum.
The fighting centres on a power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese army, and the RSF commander, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, a former camel herder from the remote West Darfur region.
Dagalo led the Janjaweed, a militia employed by the former dictator, Hassan Omar Al-Bashir, to crush a black African ethnic minority rebellion in Darfur.
Catholic Archbishop Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla of Juba, in neighbouring South Sudan, reported in early May that the cathedral in Khartoum had been vandalised and the house of the Comboni missionaries destroyed in a rocket attack.
Several other churches have been caught in the crossfire. RSF militias have occupied the compound of the Anglican Cathedral Church of All Saints in Khartoum and have turned some of the church buildings into command centres. The militants broke into offices and seized cars at gunpoint.
Some unconfirmed reports claim that Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo, the Anglican Archbishop of Khartoum, is trapped inside the cathedral in a space behind the altar.
On 14 May, gunmen raided the Mar Girgis Coptic Church, firing bullets and wounded five people. An evangelical church in Bahri in north Khartoum was bombed and partially burnt.
The violence has forced huge numbers to flee Sudan for neighbouring countries, including South Sudan and Ethiopia, which are struggling to provide food and shelter to the refugees.
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