Darfur24
29.11.2021 (Khartoum) The Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, headed on Monday to Al-Fashqa to find out the situation there and inspect the members of the armed forces on the eastern borders of the country.
Al-Burhan’s visit to the region comes a day after the killing of six Sudanese soldiers in battles in the Al-Fashqa border area with Ethiopia.
The Sudanese army announced, on Saturday, that the Ethiopian army and militias loyal to it attacked the border area of Al-Fashqa, an agricultural area disputed between the two countries.
The official Sudanese News Agency (SUNA) reported that Sudanese forces were present in the area to protect farmers during the harvest season.
The decades-long conflict with Ethiopia is centered on vast tracts of agricultural land, which Sudan says lie within its borders, according to an agreement that defined the dividing line between the two countries in the early twentieth century.
The two countries held rounds of talks, most recently in Khartoum last December, to settle the dispute, but they did not make any progress.
Tensions escalated at the end of last year after Sudan deployed its forces in Al-Fashqa, expelling Ethiopian farmers and militias from the area.
According to the Sudanese army, at least 84 Sudanese soldiers were killed in clashes with Ethiopian forces and militias from November 2020 until August of this year.
For its part, the Sudanese Armed Forces sent more military reinforcements to the borders with Ethiopia in Gedaref state, after the clashes that erupted with Ethiopian forces and militias in the Barakat Noreen area of Al-Fashqa Al-Sughra inside Sudan in Gedaref state, on Saturday morning.