Sustained firing heard in Sudanese capital amid tensions

Sustained firing heard in Sudanese capital amid tensions

Sustained firing has been heard in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum amid tensions between the military and the country’s powerful paramilitary forces.

The firing could be heard in a number of areas, including central Khartoum and the Bahri neighbourhood, on Saturday morning.

Tensions between the military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as the paramilitary is known, have escalated in recent months, forcing a delay in the signing of an internationally backed deal with political parties to revive the country’s democratic transition.

In a statement on Saturday, the RSF accused the army of attacking its forces at one of its bases in South Khartoum.

A poster of Omar al Bashir, then president of Sudan
A poster of Omar al Bashir, former president of Sudan, who was in charge when the army-RSF rivalry began. He was ousted in 2019 (Egill Bjarnason/Alamy/PA)

Current tensions between the army and the paramilitary stem from a disagreement over how the RSF should be integrated into the military and which authority should oversee the process.

The merger is a key condition of Sudan’s unsigned transition agreement.

However, the army-RSF rivalry dates back to the rule of autocratic president Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in 2019.

Under the former president, the paramilitary force, led by powerful General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, grew out of former militias, known as the Janjaweed, which carried out a brutal crackdown in Sudan’s Darfur region during the decades of conflict there.

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