Sudan army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said on Monday that “the army has withdrawn from El-Fasher”, following an announcement the city was seized by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.
“We have agreed to withdraw the army from El-Fasher to a safer location,” Sudan’s de facto ruler said in a speech broadcast on national television, asserting that his side “will take revenge” and fight “until this land is purified”.
The statement was the first by Burhan acknowledging the loss in El-Fasher after the RSF, which army troops have been fighting since April 2023, announced their victory in the city in western Darfur on Sunday.
The strategically significant city has been under siege by the paramilitary group since May 2024.
The United Nations’s migration agency said on Monday more than 26,000 people have fled the fighting in El-Fasher since Sunday, either seeking safety in the outskirts of the city or heading to Tawila, 70 kilometres to the west.
According to the UN more than one million people have fled the city since the start of the war and around 260,000 civilians, half of them children, remain trapped without aid, with many resorting to eating animal fodder.
The capture of El-Fasher gives the RSF control over all five state capitals in Darfur, consolidating its parallel administration in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur.
The army is now confined to the north, east and centre of Sudan and is excluded from a third of Sudanese territory.
Now well into its third year, the war has spiralled into what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
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© Agence France-Presse
