Sudan denies arms being shifted between Darfur and Libya
March 7, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) spokesman Colonel al-Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad asserted on Saturday that Sudan is not home to any foreign armed groups and that his country does not allow its territory to be a hub for any extremist groups.
The spokesman stressed that SAF “controls the situation in Darfur to the full extent and is monitoring the situation very carefully and does not miss out any hostile moves, if any”.
The London-based Asharq al-Awsat quoted the legal counsel of the Libyan army Salahuddin Abdul-Karim this week as saying that a convoy loaded with arms and fighters started heading since dawn on Friday from Sudan’s western region of Darfur towards Libya.
Abdul-Karim said that extremist Libyans tried to do a go-around to get closer to the Egyptian border coming from Darfur with new shipments of weapons and fighters in an attempt to control al-Kufra town in north-east Libya.
He added that their information says that extremists have crossed from Darfur into Libya boarding 70 trucks loaded with weapons in addition to about 60 SUVs carrying fighters belonging to the city of Misrata armour forces.
The Libyan official described them as terrorist groups moving in the Sahara desert south of Libya to extend help to the operations carried out by extremists in the rest of Libya.
He said their destination appears to be al-Kufra to control it because it contains oil wells and stocks of water which would pose a threat to Egyptian security.
But Egyptian security sources said they do not have information about such movements by Libyan militants near its borders.
A military official in Matrouh province on the Egyptian border said that his country is fully prepared to face all threats at the borders.
In the video released by ISIS this month, masked men dressed in black marched the 21 Egyptian captives, who had gone to Libya in search of jobs, dressed in orange jump suits, at a beach the group said was near Tripoli. They were forced down onto their knees, and then beheaded.
The gruesome footage of the killing drew anger throughout Egypt and calls for revenge and military intervention against ISIS.
Afterwards the Egyptian military announced that bombed ISIS targets inside Libya hitting ISIS camps, training sites and weapons storage areas.
But Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir criticized Egypt for launching these air strikes and called it a “mistake”.
Last September, Libya’s internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni said Sudan had attempted to airlift weapons and ammunition to the new rulers in Tripoli.
Khartoum denied this, saying the weapons were meant for the joint border force.
Thinni’s main military partner, former army general Khalifa Heftar, has also accused Sudanese of having joined Ansar al-Shar’ia and other Islamist groups which are battling pro-government forces in the eastern city of Benghazi.
(ST)