CAIRO (Reuters) -Sudan said the United Arab Emirates was responsible for an attack on Port Sudan this month, accusing the Gulf state for the first time of direct military intervention in a war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The UAE denied the allegations in a statement and said it condemned the attack.
“It is deeply regrettable that the Port Sudan authorities continue to perpetrate violence against their own citizens, yet seek to deflect blame from their own responsibility for Sudan’s internal conflict by making unfounded allegations against others,” a UAE official said.
Speaking in New York on Monday, Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations al-Harith Idris alleged that the May 4 strike on the army’s wartime capital Port Sudan was carried out by MQ-9 or MQ-9B warplanes and kamikaze drones launched from an Emirati base on the Red Sea with the aid of Emirati ships.
Idris alleged that the strike on Port Sudan was revenge for an army attack a day earlier on an alleged Emirati warplane in the RSF-controlled city of Nyala, which he said had killed 13 foreigners including “Emirati elements.”
Sudan cut diplomatic relations with the UAE this month, saying the Gulf power was aiding the RSF with supplies of advanced weaponry in the devastating conflict that broke out in April 2023 following disagreements over the integration of the two forces.
“We have expressed, not just to the UAE but to other countries, that they are turning it into a proxy war, that it’s destabilizing the region,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
U.S. congressional Democrats sought last Thursday to block arms sales to the United Arab Emirates over its alleged involvement in the war.
Attacks by drones presumed to be launched by the RSF have picked up since the army began making rapid ground advances this year. On Tuesday, the army said it had cleared the capital Khartoum State from all presence of the paramilitaries.
The drones have repeatedly hit civilian and military infrastructure deep in army-controlled territory, causing blackouts and cutting off water supplies, but had not reached Port Sudan, a humanitarian and diplomatic hub, until the May 4 attack.
(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Hugh Lawson, William Maclean and Bill Berkrot)
