Sudan army chief: No end to war without RSF surrender
PORT SUDAN – Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Saturday vowed to fight on until the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) lays down its arms.
In his first television address since the military took back the capital Khartoum this week, Burhan said a conclusion to near two years of disastrous combat was possible “if this militia lays down its arms”.
He had ruled out any negotiations with the paramilitaries, vowing to hunt down the last RSF fighters.
“We will not forgive, we will not compromise, we will not negotiate,” Burhan said, adding that victory would be reached “when the last rebel has been eradicated from the last corner of Sudan”.
Burhan’s comments followed his theatrical entry into the presidential palace only a few days earlier, after the RSF had controlled the building since the war began nearly two years ago.
Emerging from a military jet, he knelt to kiss the ground and raised his fist to the sky before walking inside the palace gates.
And last November, the army — which had been reeling from heavy losses for 18 months — began a fierce counteroffensive that thrust through central Sudan and toward the capital.
Last week, the military struck decisively in Khartoum, retaking the presidential palace and other strategic sites along with the airport.
The RSF has been forced to retreat, but its leaders remain obstinate, pledging “not an inch of surrender”.
Hours after Burhan returned to the presidential palace, the RSF announced a “military alliance” with a faction of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North movement that controls parts of the southern states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
The SPLM-N had previously fought on both sides, before signing a political charter with the RSF last month to form an alternative government.
On Thursday night, witnesses in Blue Nile’s state capital, Damazin, said both its airport, as well as the nearby Roseires Dam, were attacked for the first time in the war by drones operated by the paramilitaries and their allies.
The army later reported that it shot down RSF drones.
On Saturday, the RSF said that it had captured a military base in the country’s southwest, some 140 kilometers from Damazin.
The war has shattered Sudan, killing tens of thousands and uprooting more than 12 million.
The country now appears de facto divided in two, with the army holding the north and the east and the RSF controlling much of the western region of Darfur and much of the south.