By Tala Ramadan and Khalid Abdelaziz
DUBAI/PORT SUDAN (Reuters) -UAE authorities intercepted millions of rounds of ammunition at an airport which were being illegally transferred to Sudan’s army, Emirati state media said on Wednesday in a report that the Sudanese Armed Forces rejected as a fabrication.
Sudan’s army has instead long accused the UAE of supplying arms to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), its rivals in a two-year-old war, claims that United Nations experts have previously found to be credible and are investigating again.
The UAE denies all such charges.
The report by the WAM news agency said authorities had found “approximately five million rounds of 7.54 x 62 mm Goryunov-type ammunition” on a private plane at an airport and had made a number of arrests.
The WAM report said the plan to supply weapons had involved a group that included Sudan’s former intelligence chief, Salah Gosh, who the United States targeted with sanctions in 2023 for undermining Sudan’s transition to democracy.
“The defendants were arrested during an inspection of ammunition in a private aircraft at one of the country’s airports,” a statement by WAM said, without specifying the airport or the flight path of the plane, or naming those arrested.
The wider deal, allegedly worth millions of dollars, also included “Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, machine guns, and grenades” and was made under the cover of a sugar import deal in coordination with army Colonel Othman al-Zubeir, WAM said.
Reuters was unable to reach Gosh and Zubeir to seek comment.
Dismissing the report, the army cited its own claimed seizures of weapons supplied by the UAE.
“After the Sudanese government revealed its criminal involvement and involvement in the killing of Sudanese through its support and sponsorship of the (RSF) rebel militia, the UAE is now trying to throw dust in people’s eyes and fabricate false accusations,” army spokesman Brigadier General Nabil Abdallah told Reuters.
Sudan has filed a case at the International Court of Justice accusing the UAE of assisting the RSF in committing genocide in West Darfur, a charge the UAE denies. The court is due to make an initial ruling on the case on Monday.
Sudan’s army has long managed finances through Emirati banks, a practice that does not appear to have changed despite growing tensions between the two countries, according to sources familiar with such transactions. No arms deliveries through the Gulf state had been reported previously.
The war in Sudan, which erupted from a power struggle between the army and the RSF, has devastated the country, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing about 13 million.
While the army has retaken most of the capital Khartoum and central Sudan, fighting continues to rage in North Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people were displaced in an RSF attack on the sprawling, famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp earlier this month.
(Reporting by Tala Ramadan; additional reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ahmed Elimam and Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Aidan Lewis)
