Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claimed it shot down a cargo aircraft in northern Darfur, while Russian diplomats said they were investigating reports that Russian nationals might have been aboard. The available evidence did not independently establish the cause of the crash, the flight's mission or a confirmed casualty total.
The incident was reported in the Malha area, close to Sudan's border with Chad. The RSF described the aircraft as a foreign warplane supporting the Sudanese military and alleged that it had dropped barrel bombs on civilians. It offered no evidence for that allegation in the supplied reporting.
Mobile-phone video from the scene appeared to show RSF fighters moving through burning wreckage and displaying identity documents recovered from the debris. The fighters said the aircraft had been brought down with a surface-to-air missile. Their account remained a claim by a party to Sudan's war rather than an independently verified finding.
A damaged safety card shown in the footage identified the plane as an Ilyushin Il-76 operated by New Way Cargo of Kyrgyzstan. Other displayed documents included a Russian passport and identification connected to a company in the United Arab Emirates. Kyrgyz civil aviation officials had not responded to a request for comment by the time of the initial report.
Russia's embassy in Khartoum said its diplomats were examining the incident and that Russians may have been on board. The statement stopped short of confirming the identities or number of crew members. Consequently, specific claims about five deaths and the nationalities of all those aboard could not be treated as established from the supplied source.
The wreckage also raised questions about the aircraft's affiliation. The US-funded Conflict Observatory had linked New Way Cargo's Il-76 fleet to alleged transfers of UAE arms to the RSF through an airport at Amdjarass in neighboring Chad. United Nations experts had described accusations that the UAE armed the RSF as credible. The UAE has denied providing weapons and said its activity at Amdjarass supported a hospital.
Those competing accounts created an unresolved contradiction: the RSF said the aircraft aided Sudan's army, while documents appeared to associate it with an operator previously linked in a monitoring report to support for the RSF. Neither the footage nor the initial statements settled who controlled the flight or what it carried.
The crash occurred amid the war between the RSF and Sudanese armed forces, which began in April 2023. Fighting continued in Darfur as army-aligned forces contested RSF control, making independent access and verification difficult. Any definitive account of the aircraft's loss required further official investigation and corroborated evidence beyond the belligerents' claims.
