DUBAI (Reuters) – The deputy leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Abdelrahim Dagalo said on Thursday that sanctions imposed on him by the United States were “unfair”.
The United States targeted Dagalo over human rights abuses, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations announced during a trip to Chad’s border with Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled ongoing violence in Sudan, on Wednesday.
War broke out in Sudan on April 15 – four years after a popular uprising ousted President Omar al-Bashir. Tensions between the army (SAF) and RSF, which jointly staged a coup in 2021, erupted into fighting over a plan to integrate their forces as part of a transition to civilian rule.
Late on Wednesday, Sudan’s military ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan issued a constitutional decree ordering the dissolution of the RSF.
In comments to Sky News Arabia, Dagalo said Burhan did not have the legitimacy to do so.
“Now we have stores of weapons and supplies belonging to the armed forces (…) that could last us 20 years,” he added.
The United Nations says that since April, some 380,000 refugees – mostly women and children – have fled the conflict to Chad. Hundreds of thousands more have escaped to Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan.
(Reporting by Clauda Tanios and Nafisa Eltahir; editing by Alison Williams and Mark Heinrich)
