Sudan Peace Negotiations to Resume in Jeddah Thursday

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, receiving Deputy Commander of SAF, Shamseddine al-Kabashi (Sudanese Armed Forces)
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, receiving Deputy Commander of SAF, Shamseddine al-Kabashi (Sudanese Armed Forces)
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Sudan Peace Negotiations to Resume in Jeddah Thursday

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, receiving Deputy Commander of SAF, Shamseddine al-Kabashi (Sudanese Armed Forces)
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, receiving Deputy Commander of SAF, Shamseddine al-Kabashi (Sudanese Armed Forces)

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) said Sunday it will resume Thursday the peace talks with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The Deputy Commander of SAF, Shamseddine al-Kabashi, announced that the army was invited to Jeddah to resume negotiations.

"Our delegation will go to Jeddah and begin negotiations on coming Thursday," he told army officers at Wadi Seidna military base in Omdurman.

The negotiations, which stopped in June, are scheduled to discuss a permanent ceasefire throughout the country, paving the way for the start of a political process with the participation of political and civil forces.

Saudi Arabia and the US are meditating on talks between the two warring parties in Sudan to end the war that has been ongoing since mid-April.

On Saturday, Kabashi left the headquarters of the Army General Command in the center of Khartoum, which the Rapid Support Forces have claimed to besiege since the outbreak of the war.

The media office of the Transitional Sovereign Council reported on Facebook that the Chairman of the Council and Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, met with Kabashi in Port Sudan, which has almost become the country's alternative capital due to the ongoing war.

After Kabashi left the General Command, he went directly to the Wadi Seidna military base in the Karari region, north of Omdurman.

He told the forces at the military base that the army would defeat the rebellion all over the country and not just in Khartoum, stressing that the Karari military region would stand against rebellion.

He reassured the army forces deployed across the country that "the situation is getting better day by day."

Earlier, Burhan announced in several interviews on the sidelines of his participation at the UN General Assembly meetings in September that the army was prepared to respond to any mediation to resume talks in Jeddah.

The Saudi-US mediation suspended talks in early June after the Sudanese parties failed to adhere to the second ceasefire and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid to civilians stranded in areas of clashes in Khartoum.

High-ranking sources informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the Director of Sudanese General Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmed Ibrahim Mufaddal, met RSF's legal advisor Mohammad al-Mukhtar in Addis Ababa earlier this month.

According to the sources, the meeting addressed opening new communication channels between the two parties to return to the Jeddah-sponsored talks.



Lebanese Begin Grim Task of Recovering Bodies from Rubble

 Rescuers use an excavator as they search for dead bodies through the rubble of a destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ainata village, south Lebanon. (AP)
Rescuers use an excavator as they search for dead bodies through the rubble of a destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ainata village, south Lebanon. (AP)
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Lebanese Begin Grim Task of Recovering Bodies from Rubble

 Rescuers use an excavator as they search for dead bodies through the rubble of a destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ainata village, south Lebanon. (AP)
Rescuers use an excavator as they search for dead bodies through the rubble of a destroyed house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ainata village, south Lebanon. (AP)

In the southern Lebanon border villages of Bint Jbeil and Ainata, where fierce fighting between Israel and Hezbollah fighters took place, rescuers used excavators began searching on Wednesday for bodies under the rubble.

A woman in Ainata wrapped in black cried as she held a portrait her grandson, a Hezbollah fighter, who was killed in the fighting, as she waits for rescuers to recover his body from a destroyed home.

The smell of death filled the air and several dead bodies could be seen inside houses and between trees. In the town of Kfar Hammam, rescuers recovered four bodies, according to Lebanese state media.

Meanwhile, families and politicians visited the graves of Hezbollah fighters buried in eastern Lebanon's Baalbek region.

Families with tears in their eyes paid respects to the dead and celebratory gunshots could be heard in the background Wednesday, the first day of a ceasefire between the group and Israel.

“The resistance (Hezbollah) will stay to defend Lebanon,” Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Mokdad told reporters while visiting the graves. “We tell the enemy that the martyrs thwarted their plans for the Middle East.”

Several other Hezbollah members of parliament were present.