Russia probes alleged cargo jet shoot-down in Sudan's Darfur

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said Monday they shot down a cargo jet in the country’s far western reaches of Darfur, a claim that Russian diplomats said they were trying to investigate in the war zone.

Mobile phone footage showed what appeared to be a debris field with fighters from the paramilitary force, known as the RSF, showing off what appeared to be identity documents recovered from the crash.

However, documents also shown in the footage from the crash site suggest the aircraft was affiliated with an airline previously linked to an effort by the United Arab Emirates to arm the RSF in the war, something that has been strenuously denied by the UAE despite the evidence.

A message from Russia's Embassy in Khartoum confirmed its diplomats were investigating the incident in Sudan's Malha region in northern Darfur near the border with Chad. The embassy's message said Russians may have been on board at the time.

The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023. The paramilitary force claimed in a statement it shot down a “foreign warplane” that had been aiding the Sudanese military. It alleged without providing evidence that the aircraft had been dropping “barrel bombs” on civilians.

“All foreign mercenaries aboard the aircraft were eliminated in the operation,” the statement said.

Mobile phone footage showed fighters among the burning wreckage, claiming they shot down the aircraft with a surface-to-air missile. Identity documents shown included a Russian passport and an ID that linked back to a UAE-based company, whose phone number was disconnected.

A crumpled safety card, also purportedly from the aircraft, identified the plane as an Ilyushin Il-76 flown by New Way Cargo of Kyrgyzstan. Civil aviation officials in Kyrgyzstan did not respond to a request for comment late Monday.

The group Conflict Observatory, which is funded by the U.S. State Department and has been monitoring the Sudan war, linked New Way Cargo's Ilyushin Il-76s to arming the RSF in a report this month.

It said the airline had facilitated the UAE arms transfers through flights to Aéroport International Maréchal Idriss Deby in Amdjarass, Chad — flights the UAE has claimed have been for supporting a local hospital. Amdjarass is just across the border from Malha, where the shoot-down reportedly happened.

“The UAE has used the airport as a waypoint to facilitate weapons to the RSF,” the report said, noting that the Emirates offered a $1.5 billion loan to rapidly expand the airport. “Absent evidence of a significant local humanitarian crisis and a lack of significant Sudanese refugees in the area casts significant doubt on the UAE’s claims that the airport construction is only for a hospital.”

United Nations experts have said accusations that the UAE armed the RSF were "credible."

Emirati officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the reported plane shoot-down.

Sudan's war has killed over 24,000 people so far, according to the group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, which has been monitoring the violence since the conflict's start. The Sudanese army has been pursuing an intensified offensive near Khartoum, while forces allied with it have been battling the RSF in Darfur.

Sudan has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when two generals, the army's chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo of the RSF, joined forces to lead a military coup in October 2021. They began battling each other in 2023.

Al-Bashir faces charges at the International Criminal Court over carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in Darfur with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the U.N. say the RSF and allied Arab militias again are attacking ethnic African groups in the war.