CAIRO, April 27. /TASS/. Media reports of the potential initiation of talks between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are untrue, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

"Reports about the army’s willingness to enter into negotiations with the special forces are untrue," the statement reads, according to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV channel.

The Foreign Ministry emphasized that the RSF continued to violate a ceasefire, attack hospitals and use civilians as human shields.

The media outlet reported on Wednesday that Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had in principle accepted the idea of a meeting between representatives of the armed forces and the RSF, which was supposed to take place in South Sudan’s capital of Juba. According to an army spokesman, the initiative came from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and called for extending the current ceasefire for another 72 hours.

The situation in Sudan escalated amid disagreements between the army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who also heads the ruling Sovereignty Council, and the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), who is al-Burhan’s deputy on the council. The main points of contention between the two military organizations pertain to the timeline and methods for unifying the armed forces of Sudan, as well as who should be appointed as commander-in-chief of the army: a career military officer, which is al-Burhan’s preferred option, or an elected civilian president, as Dagalo insists. On April 15, armed clashes between the rival military factions erupted near a military base in Merowe and in the capital, Khartoum. According to the country’s health ministry, more than 600 people have been killed in the country since the conflict broke out.