A network of munition supply lines, backing the Rapid Support Forces against the Sudanese army, can be traced to the Gulf via Libya, Chad, Uganda and elsewhere.

At midday on 6 August last year, a plane carrying unknown cargo could be seen on the runway at Hamrat al-Sheikh, an airstrip in Sudan’s North Kordofan state. A handful of local people gathered around it. One of them took a video.

Hamrat al-Sheikh is a remote but strategically important site. It’s 250km from el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, which for several months has been besieged by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in its nine-month war with the Sudanese army.

The town, which in peace-time has a population of more than 400,000, is also at a key intersection of several roads, linking the RSF’s power base in western Sudan’s Darfur with Khartoum.

Details taken from that airstrip video and verified by Middle East Eye, as well as information from flight trackers Flightradar24 and JetPhotos, indicate that the ordinary-looking plane at Hamrat al-Sheikh was a white Beechcraft 1900D with a blue tail and owned by Bar Aviation, a company based in Uganda. The company did not respond to questions from MEE by the time of publication.

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