Abdel Fattah al-Burhan says he will not participate in negotiations with the RSF in Switzerland following the attack on the military graduation.
Sudanese army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan says the military will not take part in talks next month in Switzerland aimed at ending more than a year of fighting with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Al-Burhan made the statement on Wednesday, shortly after the military said he survived a drone attack on a military graduation at the Gibeit military base in eastern Sudan that killed at least five people.
“We will not retreat, we will not surrender and we will not negotiate,” al-Burhan told the troops.
“We are not afraid of drones,” he said at the Gibeit base, which is about 100 kilometers southwest of Port Sudan, where the army-aligned government fled after the start of the war with the RSF in April last year. . The fighting has created the world’s largest displacement crisis and killed at least 15,500 people, according to United Nations estimates.
Video of the drone strike, verified by the Reuters news agency, showed soldiers marching through a graduation ceremony before a buzzing sound could be heard. There is then an explosion.
Footage shared by the military, which it says was filmed in Gibeit after the attack, shows al-Burhan being surrounded by civilians who chanted: “One army, one people.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the RSF denied that the paramilitary force, which controls large areas of the country, was responsible.
On Wednesday, RSF legal advisor Mohamed al-Mukhtar told Reuters that the attack was “the result of internal disagreements between Islamists.” Further details about the complaint were not immediately available.
Negotiation rejection
Al-Burhan’s rejection of the Swiss talks comes days after RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo said the group would participate in the talks, which were expected to be co-hosted by the United States and Saudi Arabia on 14 of August.
The UN, the African Union and Egypt were designated as observers. The United Arab Emirates, which has denied accusations of supplying weapons to the RSF, also attended.
Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it conditionally accepted the invitation for talks, but only if they were followed by “full withdrawal and end of expansion” by RSF.
Al-Burhan and Hemedti briefly shared power following the 2021 overthrow of a transitional council created after the overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising two years earlier.
But an ongoing power struggle between the two men, fueled by plans to integrate their two forces, exploded into war in April 2023, with the first fighting breaking out in the capital, Khartoum. Since then, the RSF has taken control of most of the Darfur region and Gezira state.
The paramilitary force also recently launched an offensive in Sennar state in southeastern Sudan and has been besieging el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, cutting off food and supplies to residents.
Both sides have accused the other of war crimes, including deliberately attacking civilians, indiscriminately bombing residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid. In a report released on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said both sides committed widespread sexual and gender-based violence in Khartoum.
Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration said in June that nearly 10 million people in Sudan have been displaced by the fighting, which has left half the population starving.
The two sides last held direct talks in Saudi Arabia last year. These talks ended in temporary truces that were quickly violated.
Other attempts at mediation have failed to bring both sides directly to the negotiating table, although UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ personal envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, held talks with delegations from both sides in Geneva this month. .
A UN spokesperson called these talks “an encouraging initial step.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
