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Around 320 Sudanese soldiers have fled fighting in their country and crossed the border to surrender to the Chadian army, Chad’s defense minister announced Wednesday.
Elements of the Sudanese army, including 320 gendarmes, police and military personnel, have entered Chadian territory, where “all have been disarmed and confined,” General Daoud Yaya Brahim said while speaking at a press conference, local media reported.
A power struggle between Sudan’s army and a notorious paramilitary force has rocked the country, with more than 50 civilians reported dead.
Residents dodged gunfire in the capital, Khartoum, as rival forces battled over the presidential palace, state TV, and army headquarters.
South Sudanese soldiers arrived in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, an AFP journalist saw, joining a regional military force in the region wracked by the M23 rebellion.
At least 45 soldiers touched down in the city of Goma in the late morning, with further contingents expected to arrive at later dates.
Attacks by Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia whose sovereignty claim has no international recognition, have caused over 1,500 injuries since February 6 in Las Anod, which is at the heart of the movement to reunify the Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) with Somalia
Somaliland is a self-proclaimed republic, with no international recognition, formed in 1991 as a separatist state, breaking away from Somalia’s northwestern region after the civil war. It spans over a strip of land of almost 285,000 square kilometers along the south of the Gulf of Aden – a crucial shipping route, including for petroleum, connecting the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. It is now facing what many observers regard as an existential threat as the unionist movement for reunification with Somalia spreads across Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC), which is over a third of what Somaliland regards as its territory.
At least 30 more people have been killed this weekend amid intensified clashes between the Somaliland army and the SSC-Khatumo forces near Las Anod, a renowned elder has reported, with the death toll now nearing 300, with no action to restore peace going through as of now.
Garaad Abdisalan Hassan said 60 more people were also critically injured on Saturday during the clashes which have now entered the eighth week. Those injured, he said, will be taken to Mogadishu and Garowe for advanced treatment, shunning the possibility of having them treated in Hargeisa.