NAIROBI, February 26. /TASS/. At least 19 people were killed in the crash of a Sudanese military plane in the country’s second largest city of Omdurman in the Khartoum state, Al Arabiya reported.
According to the TV channel, the cause of the incident was a technical malfunction. The plane crash-landed into a civilian house after taking off from a local airbase. The plane’s crew and Sudanese servicemen on board, as well as local residents who were in the house were the victims of the incident. Rescuers continue to remove the debris on the plane crash site.
Al Arabiya also said that Sudanese Major General Bahar Ahmed Bahar, former commander of the Khartoum military district, was among those killed.
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, 2023, armed clashes between the rival military factions erupted near a military base in Merowe and in the capital, Khartoum. As a result of the conflict, thousands of people died and tens of thousands were injured. The parties held a series of consultations in Jeddah in 2023. They announced a ceasefire several times, but none of the agreements reached were fully implemented.