Ethiopia’s army chief, Birhanu Jula, says the seven-group front cannot advance without supplies from Egypt and Sudan, and that Eritrea serves as a bridge. Cairo denies it; none of the accusations have been independently verified.
Ethiopia expelled six staff members of Sudan's consulate in Assosa, a western city near the Sudanese border, and ordered the mission closed, according to officials from both countries. Sudan's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that drones used by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the country's electricity infrastructure were supplied by the United Arab Emirates and launched from Ethiopia, and that it had filed formal complaints against Addis Ababa at the UN Security Council and the African Union's Peace and Security Council. Sudan accuses Ethiopia of backing the RSF, while Addis Ababa accuses Khartoum of supporting rebels in Tigray; Ethiopia denies backing the RSF and Sudan denies backing the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). Amjad Farid, political and foreign affairs adviser to Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council, said the government remains committed to its right to defend its territory but is making every possible effort to avoid an open war with Ethiopia. Ethiopia withdrew three diplomats from its consulate in the eastern Sudanese city of El Gedaref, and reports suggested Sudanese authorities ordered the Ethiopian diplomats there to leave in retaliation; neither foreign ministry issued an official statement on the mutual expulsions, according to the Sudan Tribune. Sudan's civil war, which began in April 2023, has displaced more than 14 million people, according to UN figures, in a Reuters text republished by the Straits Times.
About 1,800 industrial facilities have been damaged in Sudan’s war, including 650 factories completely destroyed, according to the country’s Ministry of Industry. A sweets factory in Khartoum has resumed production but is operating at 40% of its previous capacity, and its owner, Mansour Gaily, estimates losses at $1 million. Reopening is hampered by electricity shortages, a damaged transport network and rising import costs, as well as the destruction or looting of raw materials and equipment.
Ethiopia has ordered six Sudanese diplomatic staff members to leave the country within 48 hours, according to a senior Ethiopian official cited by Reuters, in a text republished by Addis Standard. The six were ordered to leave Sudan’s consulate in Assosa, the administrative center of the Benishangul-Gumuz region. The decision comes days after Sudan’s army-aligned government lodged complaints against Ethiopia with the United Nations (UN) Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council, accusing Addis Ababa of allowing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to use Ethiopian territory to launch drone attacks. Addis Ababa accuses Khartoum of backing Tigrayan rebels, and both sides deny the allegations against them. On October 1, Ethiopia had already closed its embassy in Asmara and declared 10 Eritrean diplomats persona non grata, ordering them to leave within 48 hours.
Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said that there has been an intense pattern of drone strikes over the past couple of weeks against civilian infrastructure, with sources of energy and fuel apparently systematically targeted. At a hospital just outside Khartoum, the power went out and stopped treatment for 25 patients who needed dialysis; the hospital has no generator and no solar panels. Hundreds of aid trucks are stuck for lack of fuel, and there are queues kilometers long for fuel in the capital. The World Food Programme has recorded seven hits on its convoys this year and 20 over the past two years. Brown said she did not know where the strikes originate and called for the message that they must stop to reach whoever needs to hear it.
Egypt and Sudan reaffirmed in a joint statement on November 2, after the third round of their “2+2” consultation mechanism bringing foreign and irrigation ministers together in Cairo, that Ethiopia’s operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) without a binding agreement threatens downstream water security, according to Egyptian local media. The 1959 agreement invoked by the two countries allocated 55.5 billion cubic meters a year to Egypt and 18.5 billion to Sudan, while making no provision for Ethiopia, which was not a party to the treaty. The dam, built through domestic financing, has an installed generation capacity of approximately 5,150 megawatts and a reservoir capacity of about 74 billion cubic meters, making it Africa’s largest hydroelectric project.
Sudan’s army said on Tuesday that its air defenses shot down a “hostile” drone that crossed the border from Ethiopia and was intercepted over Blue Nile State, without identifying the operator, the origin, the target or the circumstances of the interception, amid border tensions, with the army repeatedly accusing external actors of backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Sudan has lodged a complaint against Ethiopia with the United Nations (UN) Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council after a series of deadly drone attacks this year, according to Al Jazeera.
Drones belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) struck the Haya electrical transformer station and a nearby oil pumping station on Saturday in eastern Sudan, setting fires and damaging the facilities. The oil facility sits on the pipeline transporting crude to the Bashayer port on the Red Sea coast. Early this Sunday, a drone strike hit the Abu Hamad power station in River Nile State in northern Sudan, setting off a fire and loud explosions, according to eyewitnesses cited by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency.
Members of the Sudanese diaspora and international human rights monitors denounced the candidacy of Emirati diplomat Lana Nusseibeh for the top UN job, citing her denial of accusations that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is fueling the war in Sudan by supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to the Guardian; Nusseibeh has the unanimous support of Gulf states but is accused of covering up backing for the RSF, accused of genocide.
A court in the United Arab Emirates has sentenced eight people to life imprisonment over arms trafficking and money laundering linked to Sudan’s army, state media reported. The network intertwined arms deals, commercial companies, bank transfers and cash payments in the supply of weapons, ammunition and military equipment to the Sudanese Army. The court ordered the confiscation of ammunition and communications devices used in the crimes and the deportation of those convicted from the UAE after serving their sentences.
Sudan accused Ethiopia of providing platforms on its territory for launching drones that recently targeted the country on Wednesday and warned of risks to regional security and stability, according to the Chinese agency Xinhua. Sudanese Foreign Minister Khalid said Sudan reserved the right to defend its security by all legitimate means. Over the past three days, drones the agency links to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted electricity stations in multiple Sudanese states.
Nyala Teaching Hospital, supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), received 36 bodies after the Sudanese Armed Forces drone strike on Dumaya market, at about 8 p.m. on Monday, 21 of them wearing civilian clothing, according to MSF. The health ministry of the Tasees government, for its part, put the toll at 188 killed and 356 injured in the attack on the market in Nyala, according to Dabanga Sudan.
More than 100 people were killed in a Sudanese military drone strike on a busy market in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur province, on Monday, with 113 wounded, according to the Associated Press (AP), which cites the Emergency Lawyers group. The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Nyala received 36 bodies and treated 150 wounded in its emergency room after the strike, according to NBC News.
About eight million children are outside the education system in Sudan, and public schooling is at risk of collapse, the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee said, according to AllAfrica. The teachers’ strike in Khartoum state entered its second consecutive day, with strong turnout in Karari, Bahri and East Nile, according to a committee statement issued on Tuesday.
A drone strike on a crowded market in Nyala, South Darfur, killed more than 100 people and injured 113 on Monday evening, according to rights groups and local officials cited by The Associated Press and Radio Tamazuj, in a report published by the Times of India. Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday that the strike hit Tanqong Market in the Dumaya neighborhood of Nyala, a city controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 36 bodies had arrived at its hospital in Nyala and that its emergency room had treated 150 injured people.
A drone strike on a market in Nyala, the de facto capital of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur, killed 21 people and wounded at least 40, a medical source and witnesses told AFP, in a report published by Asharq Al-Awsat. In the country’s east, the RSF launched a coordinated drone attack against five power stations, causing mass power outages, a government official told the Guardian.
The United Kingdom sanctioned 15 senior commanders from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) over suspected atrocities, including conflict-related sexual violence, and allocated £5 million to support survivors of that violence in Sudan. The measures include travel bans and asset freezes, with the stated aim of ensuring that “the horrors that took place at El Fasher will be known to the world”, according to the British Foreign Office.
Civilians in El Fasher, North Darfur, are still suffering detention, torture and limited access to humanitarian aid one year after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the city, according to Amnesty International — the city now has fewer than 70,000 people, compared with almost one million before the war, according to estimates from humanitarian organisations.
Sudan's permanent mission to the UN said it had fundamental questions about Lana Nusseibeh's independence, impartiality and credibility as a contender for the UN's top job, in a statement given exclusively to Middle East Eye. Sudan decries the candidacy as an attempt to ‘whitewash’ the United Arab Emirates' role in the civil war in Sudan, according to the outlet.
The United Kingdom sanctioned 15 Sudanese commanders for sexual violence, torture and attacks on civilians during the fall of El Fasher and allocated 5 million pounds to survivors of sexual violence plus another 10 million pounds in humanitarian aid to Sudan. The list includes commanders from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces, all subject to a travel ban and an asset freeze, according to the Guardian.
Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a coordinated drone attack on Monday against five power stations, causing mass power outages across the east of the country, a government official told AFP. The drones hit two power stations each in Al-Jazira and Gedaref states and one in White Nile state, leaving large parts of the three states without power, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Three weeks ago, Hala, a Sudanese woman who used a different name for security reasons, left the Tawila refugee camp and returned to el-Fasher in a small vehicle operated by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group that seized the North Darfur capital a year ago, in an account given to the campaign group Avaaz and shared with Middle East Eye. At the entrance to the city, about 60km east of Tawila, RSF fighters approached her and asked where she was going, how many days she planned to stay and where the family home was located. “They agreed and issued me an entry permit for el-Fasher. It was a piece of paper with my name, their signature, and the date,” she said. According to Hala, dealing with the fighters is very difficult: they can enter your house, threaten to rape you if you refuse to go with them, beat you and, if you argue, put you in prison. For women, traveling to el-Fasher is extremely dangerous. The day after she returned, she was threatened with abusive language in the street, with no physical assault because other civilians were nearby.
Drone strikes killed at least 306 people in the first three weeks of October in Sudan, hitting homes, markets, hospitals, displacement sites, power stations and water sources in Kordofan, Darfur, Blue Nile, Khartoum and other states in strikes attributed to both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, according to the UN human rights office; UN human rights chief Volker Türk said drones already account for the majority of conflict-related civilian deaths in Sudan this year.
The UK and partners published a joint ministerial statement on the risk of famine in Sudan estimating 19.5 million people facing acute food insecurity, including 5 million at emergency levels, according to the British government. Conflict remains the main driver of the crisis, with millions displaced, critical infrastructure damaged and food production, supply chains and markets disrupted, according to AllAfrica.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned on Friday an escalation in drone strikes across Sudan this month that killed at least 306 people and injured hundreds more in the first three weeks of October alone, according to AllAfrica. The strikes, attributed to both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), hit homes, markets, hospitals, displacement sites, power stations and water sources in Kordofan, Darfur, Blue Nile, Khartoum and other states, according to the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
The population of El-Fasher, in Sudan, has dropped to about 7 per cent of last year’s high, according to Amnesty International, as reported by Middle East Eye.
A BBC investigation found evidence that Sudanese paramilitary fighters systematically destroyed el-Fasher's healthcare system during the long siege and the subsequent takeover of the city in Darfur a year ago. The broadcaster documented at least 43 attacks on hospitals and healthcare sites between May 2024 and October 2025, some of them hitting the same target more than once.
The BBC found details of at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and healthcare sites in el-Fasher from May 2024 to October 2025, according to the BBC itself, citing sources on the ground. UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the findings “deeply disturbing” and said attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) may amount to war crimes, also according to the BBC. The RSF rejected the BBC’s findings.
A wave of drone attacks across Sudan has killed more than 160 people in recent days, according to Al Jazeera. The deadliest attack occurred near a market in the town of al-Dabba in West Kordofan, where a drone struck a transport hub and killed 80 people. The country has been at war between competing military forces since April 2023.
The death toll from the drone strike on Amiet market in Abyei rose from 73 to 153 dead, according to local officials cited by AllAfrica. The Monday attack also forced about 8,000 people to flee and drew condemnation from the UN and the UK.
A drone strike near the Amiet market, in Abyei, killed at least 150 people, according to Al Jazeera. The local administration reports 153 dead and blames the Sudanese Army, without providing evidence, according to The Guardian, in a text published at the address recording the toll and the accusation, while Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says it received more than 20 wounded, several in critical condition, including burns.
The United Nations strongly condemned drone strikes on civilians and critical infrastructure across Sudan on Tuesday, according to CGTN. Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the UN strongly condemns the reported killing of dozens of civilians in a drone strike on a market in the locality of Al Dibab, West Kordofan State, on Sunday. On Tuesday, drones damaged the main power station in the town of Tendalti, in White Nile state, according to Dujarric.
Drone strikes killed 150 people in two areas of West Kordofan state on Sunday evening, according to sources cited by the Sudan War Observatory. In Abyei, a disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan, 73 people were killed when drones hit a market on Monday, the region’s information minister said, according to the BBC.
UN (United Nations) spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said he is alarmed by the deadly drone strikes killing civilians, including children, and disrupting essential services in Sudan — with at least 19 injured on Monday in a market in Abyei and targets in Khartoum, including an area near the airport. The UN condemned all of these attacks unequivocally, according to Dujarric.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kept deportation protections in place for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese whose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was set to end on Monday, and said an announcement on the program “will be made at the appropriate time”, according to The Guardian. Until then, Ukrainians and Sudanese covered by those measures “retain protection”, the department said in a written statement.
Three children were killed in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on October 19, according to Emergency Lawyers, a group that tracks violence against civilians. Over the weekend, according to the group, the Sudanese military struck West Kordofan province with drones, bombing a market in al-Muglad on Saturday (October 17) and striking the Al-Dabab area on Sunday, killing dozens of civilians, including women and children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled an expanded map of the Middle East showing Israel and the United Arab Emirates aligned with the RSF, a Sudanese paramilitary accused of committing genocide in Darfur, and with separatists in Libya, Yemen and Somaliland, according to Middle East Eye. The map was part of Netanyahu’s unveiling on Sunday of a new security doctrine that emphasizes preemptive strikes and the creation of “buffer zones” on Israel’s borders.
A drone strike near a market in al-Dibab, in West Kordofan, killed 80 people on Sunday evening, most of them commuters catching rides home, according to The Guardian. A witness told the newspaper the drone struck twice at the transport hub in al-Dibab, one of the deadliest single attacks of the war.
Sudan’s army said it struck Rapid Support Forces (RSF) command centers in South Darfur, but the RSF and its allies say a crowded livestock market was hit. A drone strike on a cattle market in Nyala killed 30 people on Friday, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. In a statement, the paramilitary group said the strike targeted a densely populated civilian area and that preliminary reports indicated 17 women and five children were among the dead.
A drone attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s paramilitary forces, killed 41 people at a camp for displaced people in the Abu Shandi area of Blue Nile state, on the border with Ethiopia, according to the Emergency Lawyers rights group, cited by the BBC. The strike took place on Friday.
Conflict and drought are increasing the risk of famine across Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions, warned the global food crisis monitor (IPC), which says food insecurity, acute malnutrition and excess mortality will likely intensify. In May, nearly 19.5 million people, more than 40% of the population, were facing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the Associated Press, which also reports a severe El Niño-linked drought affecting more than half of Sudan, causing localized crop failures.
An air strike killed at least 72 civilians who had been prospecting for gold in a border region of Sudan, the BBC reported. The attack occurred hundreds of miles from the front lines of Sudan’s devastating civil war, according to The New York Times. The Khartoum-based rights group Emergency Lawyers accused the Egyptian military of targeting civilian miners in the North Wadi area of Jabal al-Uqaydat, according to Al Jazeera.
72 civilian miners died in a Saturday airstrike on the Egypt-Sudan border, according to preliminary information from the Emergency Lawyers organisation, cited by AFP, in a text republished by France24, with the casualty count still being verified. The organisation blamed the Egyptian Air Force for the attack, and AFP said it could not independently confirm the account.
The Emergency Lawyers group accused the Egyptian air force of a strike on Saturday that killed 72 civilian miners at a gold mine on the Sudan-Egypt border, according to the group's preliminary information, which said documentation and verification efforts were ongoing. Sudan Tribune reported that at least five strikes hit the Al-Uqaydat mine, near the Al-Ansari trading market in River Nile state, according to Mirghani Malik, an artisanal miner in the area. The outlet said it could not independently verify the casualty toll or identify the aircraft.
A drone strike by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 41 people at a camp for displaced people in the Abu Shandi area, in Blue Nile state, on Friday, according to the Emergency Lawyers group. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said it was appalled by the reports and that initial information indicated most of the casualties were women and children, according to the BBC.
The United Nations (UN) Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2830, extending the arms embargo in Darfur until December 11, to allow more time for negotiations. The text also extended the mandate of the panel of experts monitoring the sanctions until January 11, 2027. A United States proposal to widen the embargo to the entire Sudanese territory was not approved, after opposition from Russia and China, according to Al Jazeera.
A drone strike in Sudan’s Blue Nile state killed at least 30 displaced people, including women and children, and wounded dozens, according to Al Jazeera. The governor of Wad al-Mahi, Mahjoub Al-Sheikh, said the drone belonged to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and hit the centre of the province, killing 26 women and four children, according to AFP.
The United Nations (UN) Security Council extended until December 11 the 1591 Sudan sanctions regime, including targeted sanctions and an arms embargo, to permit additional time for negotiations, according to the UN. The United States (US) proposal to widen the Darfur embargo to the whole country failed, after opposition from permanent members Russia and China, according to Al Jazeera.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning drone attacks on civilians in Sudan and demanding an immediate and complete ceasefire, without preconditions, according to Al Jazeera. The resolution, which extends the mandate of the independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan, passed by a vote of 28 to 10, with nine abstentions.
US envoy Massad Boulos met on Saturday, October 4, with Sudanese General Abdel-Fattah Burhan at a luncheon hosted by the Egyptian president, according to the AP in a text republished by The Hindu, and said the efforts aim to restore security and stability and begin reconstruction and development through an inclusive Sudanese-owned national dialogue.
Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan called for political and peaceful solutions amid escalating conflicts across the region, according to Al Jazeera, in a joint declaration on Sunday following a meeting in New Alamein City in Egypt; the declaration also said control of the Red Sea should remain with the coastal states.
An aerial attack hit two trucks contracted by the World Food Programme (WFP) in South Kordofan in the early hours of Saturday, October 3, killing one driver, according to the programme, in a text by allAfrica. The trucks were en route from Dilling to Kadugli and clearly marked as humanitarian vehicles.
The Sudanese army said it captured the town of al-Mazroub, a key position of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Kordofan, after fierce fighting. According to Al Jazeera, a spokesperson described the capture as an important step in cutting the RSF's supply lines between North and West Kordofan.
The Sudanese army says it has taken control of al-Mazroub in North Kordofan state following fierce battles with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to Al Jazeera. A Sudanese army source told Al Jazeera that al-Mazroub was the RSF's largest stronghold in North Kordofan.
Fighting between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s federal government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, resumed on Wednesday, raising fears of a return to the 2020-2022 civil war, in which an estimated 600,000 people died. Sudan’s military denied in a statement on Sunday the accusations by Ethiopia’s army commander that Sudan and Egypt back armed groups fighting Ethiopian troops in the north of the country, calling them “baseless”, according to Al Jazeera.
Ethiopia’s army chief accused Egypt and Sudan of supporting a new alliance of armed groups trying to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, according to Euronews. Marshal Birhanu Jula said that neither Eritrea nor the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) could achieve anything alone without external support, according to France 24. The accusation comes as fighting has resumed in northern Ethiopia, according to Euronews.
More than 55,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to Chad this year, with arrivals through the border areas of Adre and Tine rising to 400 people a day, about 20 times the daily rate of previous months, according to the United Nations (UN) refugee agency (UNHCR), cited by Al Jazeera. The UN says it has received only 20 percent of the $1.6 billion needed for the response, a gap of $1.28 billion, Al Jazeera reports.
Donald Trump’s Africa envoy, Massad Boulos, said each side in Sudan’s war believes it can secure a decisive military victory, in an interview with France 24. The United States says it is working with regional and international partners on a diplomatic push to secure a humanitarian truce in the country, The National reported.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dissolved the Transitional Government of National Unity on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, and appointed a caretaker administration to lead the country to the December 22 election, the first since independence in 2011. The decree, read out by the state broadcaster, removed all vice presidents, ministers and local administrators and dissolved the national and state assemblies; the judiciary and security institutions remained in place, and Kiir stays in office “during the election period until the next elected president assumes office”, according to Al Jazeera. The move came a day after parliament passed amendments to the National Elections Act that unlinked the vote from the completion of a permanent constitution and a census, changes Kiir signed late on Monday and that the South Sudan Opposition Alliance rejected, according to Reuters, saying they were made without adequate consultation among the parties to the 2018 peace deal. Kiir’s longtime rival Riek Machar, who leads the main opposition party, has been under house arrest since March 2025 and is on trial on charges including treason and murder, which he denies. A permanent constitution, voter registration and the unification of armed forces loyal to rival parties all remain outstanding. Amnesty International called the decree a step toward the vote and urged conditions for people to vote and stand; analysts cited by Agence France-Presse said the amendments concentrate power in the president. The civil war that ended in 2018 killed about 400,000 people and displaced millions, according to the United Nations.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir dissolved the transitional unity government set up under the 2018 peace agreement on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, and appointed a caretaker administration to steer the country to its first national elections, scheduled for December 22, 2026, according to Radio Tamazuj and Al Jazeera. The republican order read out on state broadcaster South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) removed First Vice-President Riek Machar and all four vice-presidents, dissolved the Transitional National Legislative Assembly, the Council of States, the 10 state governments and the three administrative areas, and kept Kiir in office through the electoral period until a newly elected president is sworn in. The dissolution came a day after parliament passed amendments to the 2012 National Elections Act that dropped the requirement to complete a permanent constitution and a national census before the vote, two steps set out in the 2018 deal. The South Sudan Opposition Alliance rejected the changes for lack of consultation among the agreement’s signatories, and analysts told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the arrangement concentrates power in the president: “Kiir will be the only person in power, without vice-presidents, without the executive, without the parliament,” lawyer Michael Wani, a former member of the constitution-drafting committee, told AFP. Machar, Kiir’s longtime rival, remains under house arrest on charges including treason and murder, which he denies. Amnesty International called the decree a “decisive step” towards the country’s first election since independence in 2011 and urged the authorities to ensure a safe environment in which people can vote and stand for office.
The United States is withholding an entry visa for Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who was due to address the United Nations (UN) General Assembly this week, according to a Reuters report published by the Hindustan Times, which cites Sudanese sources and a Western analyst. The visa appears to have been made conditional on Burhan signing a 90-day ceasefire proposed by US Senior Advisor for Arab and African Affairs Massad Boulos. Sudan’s UN ambassador, Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith, asked in a letter dated September 21, 2026, for Secretary-General António Guterres to intervene, arguing that preventing a head of state of a member state from attending violates the organisation’s obligations. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told Reuters that Guterres is “deeply concerned” and that the secretariat has raised the matter with US authorities. According to Reuters, foreign minister Mohieldin Salem will deliver the address instead of Burhan, who had been scheduled to speak on Thursday, September 24, 2026.