Sources report progress on mediation efforts in Jeddah as a hunger crisis looms for millions of Sudanese.

Fighting

• Residents reported ground battles in several neighbourhoods of Khartoum between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as well as heavy gunfire in the north of Omdurman and the east of Khartoum North, two adjacent cities separated from Khartoum by the Nile river.
• The army has been pounding targets across the three cities since Tuesday as it tries to root out RSF forces that have taken control of large residential areas and strategic sites since early in the conflict that erupted on April 15.
• The RSF on Tuesday said the historic presidential palace in central Khartoum, which has symbolic importance and is in a strategic area that the RSF says it controls, had been destroyed by an air attack, a claim the army denied.
• Drone footage filmed on Wednesday and verified by Reuters appeared to show the building, known as the Old Republican Palace, intact, though smoke could be seen coming from the southeast end of the compound.
• In el-Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital, about 350km (190 miles) southwest of Khartoum, residents reported fighting and explosions.

Humanitarian situation

• Witnesses have reported seeing bodies in the streets, as most hospitals have been put out of service amid deteriorating security.
• The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday that as many as 2.5 million more people could slip into hunger in Sudan as a result of the conflict, raising the number of people suffering acute food insecurity to 19 million.
• Aid agency Islamic Relief said many aid operations in Darfur and Khartoum remained suspended due to extreme insecurity.
• On Wednesday, an Emirati military plane arrived in Port Sudan with humanitarian supplies, after two Saudi Arabian aircraft loaded with aid landed there on Tuesday, AFP journalists said.
• More than 700,000 people are now internally displaced by battles that began on April 15, and another 150,000 have fled the country, UN agencies said this week.
• Dozens of zoo animals in Khartoum,  including an elderly crocodile, parrots and giant lizards – are feared dead after street battles between the country’s rival forces made the location unreachable.
• At least 100 animals, all kept inside enclosures, will have gone more than three weeks without food or water, said Sara Abdalla, the head zoologist at the zoo, which is part of the Sudan Natural History Museum.

Diplomacy

• After days of no apparent movement, talks between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, have made progress and an agreement on a ceasefire is expected soon, a mediation source told Reuters.
• United States Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland earlier said US negotiators were “cautiously optimistic” about securing a commitment to humanitarian principles and a ceasefire but were also looking at appropriate targets for sanctions if the warring factions did not back this.