The leader of Sudan’s main paramilitary group had on Thursday, September 14, threatened to launch a governing authority in the areas his forces were in control of, if the opposition in the army formed a government.
The Rapid Support Forces, RSF, commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has been battling the army for at least five months in a conflict that has upended the country and led to a humanitarian crisis.
A senior figure in Sudan’s Sovereign Council, chaired by the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had last month, said that a caretaker government was urgently needed.
Dagalo had added that any plan by the army to initiate a caretaker government in the eastern Red Sea port of Port Sudan would divide the nation.
The RSF has spread out across residential areas all through Khartoum and the neighbouring Bahri and Omdurman, but the army has used its advantage of weighty artillery and air strikes to try to push them back, leading to loss of lives in the hundreds.
The army and Rapid Support Forces conflict began on April 15, after tensions spiked over the amalgamation of their troops in a new move to democracy. While several countries have initiated several mediation efforts, none of them have succeeded in bringing a halt to the fighting.