Today, Monday, Ethiopia denied Sudan's accusation of its army of kidnapping and executing seven Sudanese soldiers and one civilian, and said that it was a local militia that did so, while the head of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, pledged a "concrete response on the ground."
Skirmishes took place between the two neighboring countries in the past years over the disputed fertile border area of Al-Fashqa.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the eight men were kidnapped from inside Sudanese territory on June 22, taken into Ethiopian territory and killed.
The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said in a statement today, Monday, that Sudan provided false information about what happened, and that the deaths resulted from skirmishes between Sudanese soldiers and a local militia after the soldiers penetrated into Ethiopian territory, as the statement put it.
The ministry added that the incident will be investigated.
For its part, the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which accused Ethiopia of displaying the bodies of the dead, said that it had summoned the Ethiopian ambassador to Khartoum and requested the return of its ambassador from Addis Ababa for consultation, and is also preparing an official complaint to be submitted to the UN Security Council.
After a visit to the region, the Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said, "The response will be a tangible reality on the ground."
The office of the official spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces said that Al-Burhan directed "not to allow any new movements or encroachments on Sudanese lands and citizens up to the international border line" with Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry statement said that the Ethiopian government "hopes that the Sudanese government will exercise restraint and avoid any escalation of the incident, and that it (Ethiopia) will take measures that can end the escalation of the situation."
Tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia have escalated in recent years due to Ethiopia's construction of a giant hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, raising concerns in Sudan and Egypt about its impact on the main water supply.
The conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region has also driven tens of thousands of refugees across the border into eastern Sudan.
The Source
- Agencies