(Reuters) – The Sudanese army staged a large scale attack on its paramilitary rival’s supply routes on Sunday, eyewitnesses said, as its leader appeared to reject a negotiated solution.
The almost five-month war since April 15 has devastated Sudan, worsening hunger, destroying infrastructure, and killing hundreds of civilians.
The army sent volleys of air strikes into the city of Omdurman on Sunday, one day after military sources said it had also deployed large numbers of ground forces and heavy weaponry in an effort to cement control of the city
That would cut off a key supply route to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which sends supplies from the Darfur region into Omdurman, and then across the Nile into Bahri and the capital Khartoum.
Strikes also continued in southern Khartoum, after a local volunteer group said 20 people were killed late on Saturday in an air raid.
Multiple international initiatives to negotiate a solution to the conflict, which erupted over plans to integrate the forces, have failed to quell the fighting.
Speaking in the city of Kassala on Saturday, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has been Sudan’s head of state since 2019, vowed to vanquish the RSF. “This war will only end with the end of the rebellion,” he said.
Burhan emerged from army headquarters for the first time since the war began late last month, after fierce battles over the army’s only other stronghold in the capital.
The RSF said on Sunday it controlled part of that stronghold, the Armoured Corps base in southern Khartoum.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, writing by Nafisa Eltahir, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
