By Spy Uganda Correspondent
Sudan’s top military general arrived in South Sudan on Monday for talks with its president on his second trip abroad since the war in his country started in April.
Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, chairman of the ruling Sovereign Council, landed at the airport in South Sudan’s capital and was received by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir. Both leaders inspected an honor guard and then headed for talks that would focus on the conflict in Sudan, according to the council.
In April, simmering tensions between the military, led by Burhan, and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open fighting in the capital and elsewhere.
The fighting has reduced Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, to an urban battlefield, with neither side managing to gain control of the city. The military headquarters, where Burhan has purportedly been stationed since the conflict began, has been one of the epicenters of the conflict.
In the western Darfur region – the scene of a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s – the conflict has morphed into ethnic violence, with the RSF and allied Arab militias attacking ethnic African groups, according to rights groups and the United Nations.