Sudan paramilitaries claim key zone bordering Egypt, Libya

KHARTOUM (AFP): Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Wednesday its fighters seized a strategic zone on the border with Egypt and Libya, as the regular army announced its withdrawal from the area.

The announcements came a day after the army accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of launching a cross-border attack alongside the RSF, the first allegation of direct Libyan involvement in the Sudanese war.

“As part of its defensive arrangements to repel aggression, our forces today evacuated the triangle area overlooking the borders between Sudan, Egypt and Libya,” army spokesman Nabil Abdallah said in a statement.

Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has pitted army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against his erstwhile ally Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the RSF.

In a statement on Wednesday, the RSF said its fighters had “liberated the strategic triangle area,” adding that army forces had retreated southward “after suffering heavy losses.”

The army said on Tuesday that Haftar’s troops in coordination with the RSF attacked its border positions in a move it called “a blatant aggression against Sudan.”

The war has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the center, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced 13 million, including four million who fled abroad, triggering what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Efforts by international mediators to halt the fighting have so far failed, with violence continuing to escalate across the western Darfur region and the Kordofan region in the country’s south.