President William Ruto has once again called out the two warring Sudanese generals, urging them to stop the fighting that has entered its second month.
Intense battles in the capital Khartoum and its sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman have raged despite Saudi and US-brokered talks between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Jeddah, aimed at securing humanitarian access and a ceasefire.
“These generals are bombing everything, roads, hospitals, bridges, and destroying the airport using military hardware bought with African money. We need to tell those generals to stop the nonsense,” President Ruto said on Wednesday during the Pan-African Parliament Summit in South Africa.
The Kenyan leader, who has been tasked by a regional bloc, Igad, together with other heads, to help in reconciling Sudan’s rival sides, said military capacity was for battling criminals and terrorists and not for fighting children and women.
Ruto, however, blamed African states for lacking the capacity to stop the war in Sudan “because our own peace and security is funded by others”.
Nearly 1,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced in Sudan since battles between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads a paramilitary force, erupted in April.
The unrest has caused about 200,000 to flee into nearby countries and those still in Khartoum are struggling to survive.
meanwhile, The Sudanese army has published a video showing its leader, Lt-Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, walking among cheering soldiers at an unknown location in the capital, Khartoum.
The rare 23-second video published on Wednesday shows Gen Burhan armed with a rifle and a pistol. He is seen clad in a military outfit, shaking hands with cheering soldiers.
“The fighter – Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces – among his soldiers at the field,” the video’s headline reads.
This is the first video of its kind since the ongoing armed conflict began on 15 April between the army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). However, in the early days of the fighting, Gen Burhan was seen together with other military leaders commanding soldiers from inside an unknown building in Khartoum.
Both the army chief and his rival RSF commander Gen Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti, have sought to boost the morale of their respective battling forces.
Hemedti also made a similar appearance at an unknown location in Khartoum. He also recently denied in an audio message that he was killed.
The fighting, which is underpinned by a power struggle between Gen Burhan and Hemedti, has entered its second month, in which more than 800 people have been killed and thousands of others wounded.
