Khartoum [Sudan], October 22: Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces say they have shot down a cargo jet in the country's far western reaches of Darfur, a claim that Russian diplomats say they are trying to investigate in the war zone.
Few details of the purported shoot-down were immediately available. Mobile phone footage showed what appeared to be a debris field with fighters showing off what appeared to be identity documents recovered from the crash.
A message from Russia's Embassy in Khartoum confirmed its diplomats were investigating Monday's incident in Sudan's Malha region in northern Darfur near the border with Chad. The embassy's message said Russians may have been on board at the time.
The paramilitary force, known as the RSF, has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023.
A request to the RSF for comment was not immediately returned. However, the paramilitary force claimed in a statement it shot down a "foreign warplane" that had been aiding the Sudanese military. It alleged without providing evidence that the aircraft had been dropping "barrel bombs" on civilians.
"All foreign mercenaries aboard the aircraft were eliminated in the operation," the statement said.
Sudan's war has killed over 24,000 people so far, according to the group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, which has been monitoring the violence since the conflict's start. The Sudanese army has been pursuing an intensified offensive near Khartoum, while forces allied with it have been battling the RSF in Darfur.
Sudan has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when two generals, the army's chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the RSF, joined forces to lead a military coup in October 2021. They began battling each other in 2023.
Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in Darfur with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the United Nations say the RSF and allied Arab militias again are attacking ethnic African groups in the war.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation