Russia investigates alleged downing of cargo plane in Sudan’s Darfur region

JON GAMBRELL Associated Press — Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Monday it had shot down a cargo plane in far west Darfur, a claim Russian diplomats said they were trying to investigate in the war zone.

Cellphone footage showed what appeared to be a debris field with fighters from the paramilitary force, known as the RSF, displaying what appeared to be identity documents recovered during the crash.

However, documents also shown in the crash site footage suggest the plane was affiliated with an airline previously linked to a UAE effort to arm the RSF during the war, which has been vigorously denied by the United Arab Emirates despite the evidence. .

A message from the Russian Embassy in Khartoum confirmed that its diplomats were investigating the incident in Sudan’s Malha region of North Darfur, near the border with Chad. The embassy message indicated that Russians may have been on board at the time.

The RSF have been at war against the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The paramilitary forces claimed in a statement to have shot down a “foreign warplane” which was helping the Sudanese army. He alleged, without providing evidence, that the plane dropped “barrel bombs” on civilians.

“All foreign mercenaries on board the plane were eliminated during the operation,” the statement said.

Cellphone footage showed fighters among the burning wreckage, saying they had brought down the plane with a surface-to-air missile. The identity documents presented included a Russian passport and an ID linking to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, whose telephone number was disconnected.

A crumpled security card, also allegedly from the plane, identified the plane as an Ilyushin Il-76 flown by New Way Cargo of Kyrgyzstan. Civil aviation officials in Kyrgyzstan did not respond to a request for comment Monday evening.

The Conflict Observatory group, funded by the US State Department and monitoring the war in Sudan, linked New Way Cargo’s Ilyushin Il-76s to RSF weaponry in a report released this month.

He said the airline had facilitated arms transfers from the UAE via flights to Maréchal Idriss Deby International Airport in Amdjarass, Chad – flights which the UAE claimed were intended to support a local hospital. Amdjarass is just across the border from Malha, where the shooting is believed to have taken place.

“The UAE used the airport as a crossing point to supply weapons to the RSF,” the report said, noting that the Emirates offered a $1.5 billion loan to rapidly expand the airport. “The absence of evidence of a significant local humanitarian crisis and the lack of significant Sudanese refugees in the region cast significant doubt on the UAE’s claims that the airport construction is solely for a hospital.”

UN experts said accusations that the UAE armed the RSF were “credible”.

Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the downed plane.

Sudan’s war has so far killed more than 24,000 people, according to the group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, which has been monitoring the violence since the conflict began. The Sudanese army continues an intensified offensive near Khartoum, while its allied forces fight the RSF in Darfur.

Sudan has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the overthrow of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when two generals, army chief Gen. Abdel- Fattah Burhan and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the RSF joined forces to carry out a military coup in October 2021. They began clashing in 2023.

Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court for carrying out a campaign of genocide in the early 2000s in Darfur with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Human rights groups and the UN say the RSF and allied Arab militias are again attacking African ethnic groups in this war.