The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Friday took control of an oil pumping station in the Al-Aylifon area east of Khartoum and evacuated technicians, engineers and workers, witnesses said.
The terminal, located about 30 kilometers east of the Sudanese capital, pumps Sudan and South Sudanese oil through pipelines stretching about a thousand kilometers to the export port of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea.
If the Al-Aylifon pumping station ceases to operate, the export of oil abroad will stop.
The “Emergency Lawyers”, a group of independent lawyers, said in a statement that clashes between the Rapid Support Forces led by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan “continued on Friday in the area of Al-Aylfon and left many dead among civilians.”
The group accused the RSF of “looting and forcibly displacing the population” but at the same time warned against calls for the use of “air and artillery bombardment” in the area, warning that “the area is populated” and that it “received hundreds of civilians fleeing the capital.”
