Cairo: The head of the Sudanese paramilitary fast support forces admitted in a speech the fighters on Sunday that the group had retired from the capital Jostum, that the rival army forces have resumed.
The comment of the RSF Mohamed Hamdan Daglo commander occurred three days after the group said there would be no “retirement or surrender” and that their forces had “repositioned”, despite the army’s statement on Thursday that “the last pockets” of the RSF had been eliminated from Khartoum after almost two years of war.
“I confirm that in fact we have left Jardum, but … we will return with an even stronger determination,” Daglo said in the speech published on social networks.
The war has created what the United Nations describes as the worst crises of hunger and displacement of the world.
Pope Francis urges the new conversations “as soon as possible” to end the war
More than 12 million people have been uprooted, tens of thousands killed and a backed evaluation declared famine in parts of the country.
“All who think there are negotiations or agreements in process with this diabolical movement are wrong,” said Daglo, referring to the army.
“We have no agreement or discussion with them, only the language of weapons.”
The Army Chief, Abdel Fattaah Al-Burhan, also promised not to retreat, after a decisive bombing in which the army recovered the presidential palace, the airport damaged by the war and other key sites in the center of the city where the buildings are burned and with bullets.
“We will not forgive, nor will we commit or negotiate,” Burhan said, adding that victory would only be complete when “the last rebel has been eradicated since the last corner of Sudan.”
Despite the claim of the jartum military, the third largest country in Africa is still essentially divided by two by the war.
The army remains in the east and north, while the RSF controls most of the vast Darfur region in the west, where it is rooted and parts of the south.
Pope Francis, recovering from an episode of pneumonia that threatens life, issued written prayers on Sunday and urged new negotiations as soon as possible in Sudan.
Appeal for new conversations
At the beginning of the war, the United States and Saudi Arabia carried out mediation, but multiple cessation -fire collapsed.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, said Thursday that Washington hoped to do more diplomatically to end the war.
Rubio said he was “committed” in Sudan and that he had discussed the war with international players, including Kenya William Ruto and Prime Minister Ethiopian, Abiy Ahmed.
Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken, was widely trying to negotiate the end of the war, but finally expressed disappointment for the inability to do so.
The United States has imposed sanctions on both sides.
He accused the army of attacks against civilians and said that the RSF had “committed genocide” in Darfur.
After a year and a half of defeats against the RSF, the Army, at the end of last year, began to push Jardan for the center of Sudan.
Analysts have blamed RSF losses to strategic errors, internal cracks and supplies decreasing.
However, on Thursday night, witnesses to the capital of the state of the Nile Blue Damazin reported that both their airport and the nearby Roseires dam were attacked by the paramilitaries and their allies for the first time in the war.
Later, the army said it had knocked down the RSF drones.
Almost 500 kilometers northwest at El-Epan City, a medical source on Sunday told AFP that a RSF strike killed a child and wounded eight other people.
Posted in Dawn, March 31, 2025
