Sudan’s army reported on Friday that it killed Ali Yagoub Gibril, a senior commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who was sanctioned by the United States.
The incident occurred during a battle in the besieged city of Al-Fashir in north Darfur.
There has been no immediate response from the RSF concerning the development.
Gibril was a prominent RSF commander in Al-Fashir, which remains the last major city in Sudan’s Darfur region not under the control of the paramilitary group.
According to a statement by the army, he was killed during an RSF attack that was repelled early on Friday by Sudanese troops and allied “joint forces.”
These forces include non-Arab former rebel groups from Darfur aligned with the Sudanese army.
Al-Fashir, with a population of 1.8 million, has been under siege by the RSF for weeks.
Concerns have been raised by senior United Nations (UN) officials about escalating conflict in the area potentially leading to widespread intercommunal violence.
The UN Security Council had on Thursday, called for an end to the conflict which has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country.
The conflict initially erupted in mid-April last year in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, over terms for transitioning to democracy.
It quickly spread to other regions of the country, resulting in the world’s largest displacement crisis, renewed ethnic clashes in Darfur attributed to the RSF and its allies, and a significant rise in severe hunger.
