The leaders of Sudan’s rival military forces, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have said they are unwilling to negotiate with each other, as battles raged around the country for a sixth day. “There is no other option but the military solution,” Burhan said in a phone interview, in which he also accused elements in the RSF of “closing roads and preventing the free movement of people” in many regions. “A real truce cannot be implemented in these conditions,” he added. Hemedti accused Burhan of starting the fighting and said that therefore there could be no future negotiations with him. The interviews, which cast doubt on the prospect of a lasting ceasefire, came as 177 Egyptian soldiers were evacuated from the town of Dongola back to Egypt and 27 air force personnel were transferred from RSF custody to the Egyptian embassy in Khartoum. The RSF said it had detained 27 personnel after storming the airbase at Merowe, a strategic town famous for archaeological remains about 300km north of the Sudanese capital.
SOURCE: CNN
