Sudan's warring factions are locked in a conflict that two weeks of fighting shows neither can easily win, raising the specter of a drawn-out war between an agile paramilitary force and the better-equipped army that could destabilize a fragile region.
Even with hundreds of people killed and the capital Khartoum turned into a war zone, there has been little sign of compromise between army commander Abdul-Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commonly known as Hemedti.
Foreign mediators have struggled to stop the slide to war: a series of ceasefires brokered by the United States and others have been undermined by shelling and air strikes in Khartoum and conflict elsewhere, including the Darfur region in the west.