The Sudanese Armed Forces say they have withdrawn from the area as part of its ‘defensive arrangements’.
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have said their fighters have seized a strategic zone on the border with Egypt and Libya, as the regular government-aligned army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), announced its withdrawal from the area.
The announcements on Wednesday came a day after SAF accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar of launching a cross-border attack alongside the RSF, the first allegation of direct Libyan involvement in the Sudanese war.
“As part of its defensive arrangements to repel aggression, our forces today evacuated the triangle area overlooking the borders between Sudan, Egypt and Libya,” army spokesperson Nabil Abdallah said in a statement.
Since April 2023, the brutal civil war has pitted SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his erstwhile ally Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the RSF, in a bitter power struggle.
In a statement on Wednesday, the RSF said its fighters had “liberated the strategic triangle area”, adding that army forces had retreated southward “after suffering heavy losses”.
SAF said on Tuesday that Haftar’s troops, in coordination with the RSF, attacked its border positions in a move it called “a blatant aggression against Sudan”.
Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also accused the United Arab Emirates of backing the assault, describing it as a “dangerous escalation” and a “flagrant violation of international law”.
While Cairo has supported Sudan’s leadership under Burhan since the war began in April 2023, Khartoum has repeatedly accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with weapons, which the Emirati government has denied.
Tensions between Khartoum and Abu Dhabi escalated in May after drone strikes hit the wartime capital of Port Sudan for the first time since the outbreak of the war.
After the attacks, Sudan severed its diplomatic ties with the UAE and declared it an “aggressor state”.
Since the war began more than two years ago, multiple countries have been drawn in. It has effectively split Sudan in two, with SAF holding the centre, east and north, including the capital Khartoum, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced 13 million, including four million who fled abroad, triggering what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Efforts by international mediators to halt the fighting have so far failed, with violence continuing to escalate across the western Darfur region and the Kordofan region in the country’s south.
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