US sanctions on Sudan's RSF 'unfair': senior commander

The deputy leader of Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) Abdelrahim Dagalo has said that sanctions imposed on him by the United States were "unfair".

Sudan's military ruler General Abdel Fattah al Burhan issued a constitutional decree ordering the dissolution of the RSF, late on Wednesday.

In comments to Sky News Arabia on Thursday, Dagalo said Burhan did not have the legitimacy to do so.

"Now we have stores of weapons and supplies belonging to the armed forces (...) that could last us 20 years," he added.

The United States targeted Dagalo over human rights abuses, the US ambassador to the United Nations announced on Wednesday during a trip to Chad's border with Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled ongoing violence in Sudan.

Thousands dead

The US Treasury said in a statement that it had sanctioned Abdelrahim Dagalo — a senior military commander and brother of Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who is the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — accusing him of leading a group of soldiers responsible for "the massacre of civilians, ethnic killings, and use of sexual violence."

Dagalo is the first official on either side to be sanctioned since the start of the war.

War broke out in Sudan on April 15 - four years after a popular uprising ousted President Omar al Bashir.

Tensions between the army (SAF) and RSF, which jointly staged a coup in 2021, erupted into fighting over a plan to integrate their forces as part of a transition to civilian rule.

So far, the war has killed at least 5,000 people, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.