Russia is investigating whether Sudanese militia shot down a cargo plane

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Monday they shot down a cargo plane in western Darfur, a claim Russian diplomats said they were trying to investigate in the area of war

Mobile phone 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 from the crash.

However, documents also shown in images of the crash site suggest the plane was affiliated with an airline previously linked to a UAE effort to arm the RSF in war. something that has been strongly denied by the UAE despite the evidence.

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

The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023. The paramilitary force claimed in a statement that it had shot down a “foreign warplane” that had been assisting the Sudanese army. He alleged without providing evidence that the plane had been dropping “barrel bombs” on civilians.

“All foreign mercenaries on board the aircraft were eliminated in the operation,” the statement said.

Mobile phone footage showed fighters among the burning wreckage, claiming they shot down the plane with a surface-to-air missile. The identity documents shown included a Russian passport and an identity document linked to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, whose phone number was disconnected.

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

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

He said the airline had facilitated arms transfers from the United Arab Emirates through flights to Aéroport International Maréchal Idriss Deby in Amdjarass, Chad; the flights the UAE claimed were to support a local hospital. Amdjarass is just across the border from Malha, where the attack reportedly took place.

“The UAE has used the airport as a point of reference to facilitate arms 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 area casts significant doubt on the UAE’s claims that the construction of the airport is only for a hospital.”

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

Emirates officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the downing of the plane.

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

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

Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court for waging a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in Darfur with the Janjaweed, the forerunner of the RSF. Rights groups and the UN say RSF and allied Arab militias are once again attacking ethnic African groups in the war.

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Associated Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.