Videos and photos have surfaced online reportedly showing a warehouse of Emirati ammunition and missiles in Wad Madani, Sudan, after the country’s military captured the strategic city from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The videos show members of Sudan’s military walking around the warehouse, which is filled with large boxes, and one Sudanese soldier saying the weapons all originate from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), reports the Middle East Eye.
On Saturday, the Sudanese military said it, along with allied armed groups, captured Wad Madani, the capital of Sudan’s al-Jazira state.
For a year, the city was under the control of the RSF, the paramilitary force currently fighting the Sudanese army in a civil war that has been ongoing since April 2023.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, acknowledged defeat in Wad Madani but continued to say that the war was not over.
“We lost Wad Madani, but we will reclaim it. People just need to regroup, reorganise and reassess themselves,” he said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
The war in Sudan between the Sudanese army and the RSF has displaced over 11 million people, according to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), with more than eight million people on the brink of famine according to the UN.
On Tuesday, the US government announced that it was declaring that a genocide is taking place in Sudan, and moved to sanction the RSF’s Dagalo and his relatives.
The RSF has been accused of widespread atrocities and human rights abuses across the state. Multiple cases of sexual assault carried out by the paramilitary group have been reported by the media, including Middle East Eye.
Fighters from both sides of the conflict have also been profiting from the war through the smuggling and sale of vital goods including food, fuel and medicine.
Foreign countries have also been involved with the war, including the UAE which has backed the RSF forces.
The Middle East Eye report said that Emirati military support for the RSF has kept the group “in the fight and allowed them to sustain it, with no end in sight”.
Reuters reported in December that dozens of flights from the UAE landed at an air strip in Chad that has been used to funnel arms across the border into Sudan. A UN panel of experts in January 2024 said, citing “credible” allegations, that the UAE was providing military supplies to the conflict through the Chad air strip.
The UAE has denied this, saying that it has sent aid to Sudan, but not weapons.
The MEE said a western official previously said on the condition of anonymity that many US officials viewed the UAE as the “enabler” of the war. However, the administration was always “too distracted” to seriously press Abu Dhabi over this support.
