Sudan’s army chief on Monday branded the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces a rebellious group and ordered it be dissolved, the foreign ministry said, as the faction battled the army in the capital and across the country.
The order follows a violent power struggle that has killed at least 97 civilians and injured 365 since the fighting started early on Saturday, according to a toll published by the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an activist group. The government has not published a toll.
Bombardments and airstrikes 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 violence in the capital has also 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.
A protracted power struggle raises the risk of Sudan falling into civil war four years after long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir was toppled in an uprising, as well as derailing an internationally-backed framework deal to launch a civilian transition that was due to be signed earlier this month.
Egypt, which has long been wary of political change in Khartoum, is the most important backer of Sudan’s armed forces. Hemedti has cultivated ties with several foreign powers including the United Arab Emirates and Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an immediate ceasefire was needed, saying that view was shared by the international community.
“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.
