Defense Council: Sudan will sever ties with the United Arab Emirates

The army-affiliated defense council said on Tuesday that Sudan will cut links with the United Arab Emirates because Abu Dhabi is said to be helping the rival Rapid Support Forces in the country’s civil war.

The defense council said that the UAE gave the RSF advanced and strategic weapons that let them damage facilities in the city of Port Sudan since Sunday. This was a big escalation in the conflict that has been going on for two years.

The UAE has refuted these claims many times.

The UAE was named a “aggressor state” by the council, which also said it “reserves the right to respond to the aggression by every means to preserve the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

In a TV speech from Port Sudan after the defense council’s announcement, Sudan’s army boss Abdul Fattah al-Burhan said that the army would “defeat the militia and those who support it and back it.”

He spoke while a plume of smoke rose from the damaged port facilities. “We tell those who attacked the Sudanese people that the time for vengeance will come, and the people will win in the end,” he said.

For a long time, Sudan’s army has said that the UAE is supporting the RSF. Even though the UAE rejects the charge, some U.N. experts and U.S. lawmakers believe it to be true, citing evidence from reports on the supply of weapons by human rights groups.

The most recent report from a group of experts at the UN, which came out in April, only mentioned the UAE in terms of its role in peace talks in Sudan.

The International Court of Justice said on Monday that it did not have the power to rule on Sudan’s case that the UAE was supporting genocide in Darfur by giving guns to paramilitary groups.

Last month, Sudan told the U.N.’s top court that the UAE was breaking the Genocide Convention by helping militia groups in Darfur. The UAE, however, said the case should be thrown out.