Mercenaries from Ethiopia’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front are fighting alongside Sudanese army regulars against fighters of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group is claiming.
The RSF which has been battling soldiers of the Sudanese armed forces for control of the country since April last year refers to ‘documented evidence’ of mercenaries from Tigray as having engaged its fighters on multiple occasions.
Tens of thousands of people mostly civilians, have been killed and over two million displaced since hostilities began last year between members of the Sudanese Armed Forces led by junta leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF under the command of General Mohamed Hamden Dagalo.
Sudan shares with the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, a border which had been a bone of contention that degenerated into armed hostilities between 2020 and 2023.
Some observers say the possible involvement of Ethiopian Tigray fighters in the Sudanese conflict could be one of the spillover effects of the TPLF war against the Ethiopian federal forces between 2020 and 2022.
Many TPLF fighters and refugees had sought asylum in Sudanese territory during the course of the Ethiopia-Tigray war and may have been recruited by the Sudan Armed Forces to fight against the RSF.
There were reports of some UN peacekeepers refusing to return to Tigray at the end of the conflict, fearing reprisals from Ethiopian federal forces.
The regional govenrment in Tigray is embarking on a scheme to resettle thousands of exiled Tigrayans on land along the disputed border with Sudan.
The area in question was under the control of Ethiopia’s Amhara fighters during the conflict with the TPLF.
While the Ethiopian conflict was raging, the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmad severally accused Sudan of harbouring and training Tigray fighters, a claim the authorities in Khartoum at the time had strongly denied.
However, the authorities in Tigray, have been quick to dismiss RSF claims of involvement in the Sudanese conflict as ”wildly untrue”.
They say such an accusation by the paramilitary group is devoid of facts, has no basis in truth and therefore baseless as no member of the TPLF or their affiliates are involved in the Sudanese civil war as mercenaries.
WN/as/APA