General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the armed forces that have been at war for more than four months with the paramilitaries, arrived on Sunday in Port Sudan, Sudan’s only city with a functioning airport, according to official announcements.

Since war broke out in the country on April 15, General Burhan, de facto head of state since seizing power in a 2021 coup, has been holed up at army headquarters in Khartoum, where the Rapid Action Forces have repeatedly attacked Supporter (DTY) of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the second in command of the military junta before he became his number one enemy.

According to a statement from the de facto authorities, General Burhan yesterday met with the second in command of the military regime, Malik Agar, and other government officials who have relocated to Port Sudan.

On Thursday, for the first time, he appeared in a northern suburb of Khartoum, then in Atbara, 300 kilometers northeast of the capital, inspecting troops and greeting civilians, assuring everyone that victory was “near”.

While the airport in the capital Khartoum has been bombed since the first hours of the war, the one in Port Sudan continues to operate. In addition to humanitarian aid aircraft, it also welcomes private company planes, which operate flights to and from Sudan.

He gives and takes rumors about a possible trip of General Burhan abroad. Sudanese journalists cite capitals that play a significant role in the diplomatic game in Sudan, especially Cairo, which has always supported the military, and Riyadh, which at the beginning of the war jointly negotiated with Washington to implement a ceasefire. .

In the meantime, the fighting does not stop. Yesterday Sunday “rockets hit houses causing five casualties”, a medical source in Khartoum told AFP.

Residents also spoke of airstrikes in the capital.

The war has claimed the lives of around 5,000 people, according to the non-governmental organization ACLED. The real toll, however, is considered to be much heavier, as many areas of the country are completely cut off from the rest of the world, while the two camps do not announce their losses.

More than 4.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes because of the armed conflict, and more than 6 million Sudanese are now on the “brink of famine,” according to the United Nations.

War and famine now threaten to “overwhelm” the whole of Sudan and plunge the region into a humanitarian disaster, the UN warned on Friday, facing a shortage of funds and bureaucratic obstacles to distributing aid.