Army chief of Sudan arrives in Port Sudan

As the nation struggles to recover from more than four months of battle with paramilitaries, Sudan’s army head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan landed in the coastal city of Port Sudan on Sunday, according to an official announcement.

Since the crisis began on April 15, Burhan has been holed up within army headquarters in the capital Khartoum. This week, he made his first public appearance in months.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan’s former deputy and competitor Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, have been launching an ongoing assault on the headquarters, which has been repelled by the armed forces.

Burhan was greeted on Sunday by his deputy Malik Agar and other government representatives who, like the UN, have moved their operations to Port Sudan since it has been spared the terrible violence that has engulfed other regions of the country.

In the capital Khartoum, where witnesses also reported airstrikes, “rockets fell on houses, killing five people,” a medical source told AFP on Sunday.

Since leading a coup in October 2021 with Daglo, which overthrew civilian officials from office and halted a precarious transition to civilian rule, Burhan has been the de facto ruler of Sudan.

With comments stating he was at the Wadi Seidna air base north of Khartoum, videos of Burhan’s first sortie outside army headquarters were broadcast on Thursday.

More video was released by the army on Friday, showing Burhan addressing troops, promising them a “victory,” and visiting an army hospital in the 300-kilometer-northeast city of Atbara.

The airport at Port Sudan has continued to operate for evacuation and relief flights while the airport in the capital has been closed since the start of the crisis, stoking rumours that the army head will travel abroad.

Local journalists who have flocked to the coastal city to follow the army chief’s movements have suggested that he might be going to Jeddah, the location of previous Saudi Arabia-US-mediated ceasefire talks, or Cairo, Burhan’s traditional closest ally abroad.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project’s conservative estimations indicate that the conflict has claimed the lives of close to 5,000 individuals.

Since many victims were unable to access medical care, entire cities were blocked off from the outside world, and both sides refused to record their fatalities, it is believed that the actual number is substantially higher.

In Sudan, where six million people are “one step away from famine,” according to the UN, more than 4.6 million people have been displaced by violence on both sides of the country’s borders and inside of it.