Sudanese army intelligence has arrested several officers on charges of plotting a coup amid the North African country's ongoing military-political crisis, Al Sudani newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
The detainees serve in the Operations Management Department of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the city of Omdurman, part of the Greater Khartoum region, the paper said, adding that among those accused of plotting the coup are a colonel, a lieutenant colonel and a major.
Since April 2023, and for 11 months now, violent and widespread armed clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have continued in various areas of Sudan, mostly concentrated in the capital, Khartoum, leaving thousands of civilians dead and wounded.
The disagreements between the head of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council and SAF commander, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and his rival RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, surfaced publicly after the signing of the December 5, 2022 Framework Agreement, which established the transitional period between the military and civilian components and agreed that the army would withdraw from politics and hand over power to civilians.
Dagalo accused the Sudanese army of planning to remain in power and not hand over power to civilians, after the army demanded the integration of the RSF under the banner of a national army, while the SAF considered the movements of the Rapid Support Forces as a rebellion against the state.
Arab, African, and international parties brokered a ceasefire, but these mediations failed to bring a permanent cessation of fighting.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the ongoing fighting in the country could lead to disease outbreaks and a fatal collapse of the health system. Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced people in Sudan has surpassed 11 million, according to Graham Abdel-Qadir, Sudan's acting minister of culture and information.