KHARTOUM: Sudan’s army chief on Monday branded the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces a rebellious group and ordered it be dissolved, as the faction battled the army in deadly violence that derailed a shift to civilian rule and prompted US calls for a ceasefire.
Both sides claimed they made gains on Monday, in a violent, nationwide power struggle the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an activist group, said has killed at least 97 civilians and 45 soldiers, with a total of 942 injured, since the fighting started at the weekend.
The government has not published a toll in fighting that has spurred fears of a wider civil conflict.
Bombardments and strikes from fighter jets rocked Khartoum on Monday, including near the military headquarters, and in Bahri just across the Nile River near another base, witnesses in the areas said. Smoke billowed from the runway of the capital’s international airport, where explosions and fires were visible on TV images.
The rare outbreak of fighting in the capital has spread to other parts of Sudan, pitting the armed forces against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a former militia that had been due to merge with the army and whose leaders shared power in a ruling military council.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan heads the ruling council while RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, is his deputy. Both sides said they had made gains on Monday.
limited clashes
The RSF claimed it had captured an airport and military bases, while the military said it was in control of its headquarters despite what it called “limited clashes” in the vicinity.
The army regained control of the main television station, which briefly went off air after gunfire was heard during a live broadcast.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an immediate ceasefire was needed. Germany called on both sides to de-escalate.
“There is a shared deep concern about the fighting, violence that’s going on in Sudan - the threat that that poses to civilians, that it poses to the Sudanese nation and potentially poses even to the region,” Blinken said in Japan.
It appeared that the army was gaining the upper hand in the fighting in Khartoum, using air strikes to pound RSF bases. The RSF posted videos showing its soldiers in Merowe airport and in a base in a southern district of the capital and in part of a military headquarters in the city centre. — Reuters
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