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KHARTOUM
Sudan’s foreign minister said on Thursday that his country has taken control of all borders with Ethiopia.
At a press conference, Omar Qamar al-Din said: “The Sudanese army took control of all the borders with Ethiopia.”
“We did not receive anything official from Ethiopia about the ignorance of the borders between the two countries,” he said.
Last Monday, the Sudanese army called for retaking control of an area in the al-Fashqa border region with Ethiopia. “All we have done is restore our land, which is known to all [as part of Sudanese territory]”said Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Khaled Abdin al-Shami, speaking with Anadolu Agency in the eastern state of Al-Qadarif.
According to the Sudanese authorities, some Ethiopian gangs seized the land of Sudanese farmers in al-Fashqa after forcibly evicting them. Sudan accuses the Ethiopian army of supporting these gangs, which Addis Ababa denies.
On December 19, Sudan announced the dispatch of a large number of military reinforcements to the Ethiopian border to “regain its usurped lands from an Ethiopian militia” in al-Fashqa, according to the Sudanese News Agency.
On Tuesday, Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Dina Mufti said: “If Sudan does not stop expanding into Ethiopian territories, Ethiopia will be forced to launch a counteroffensive.”
Last week, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok discussed the demarcation of the border with his Ethiopian counterpart Abiy Ahmed during a summit of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a grouping of seven East African countries, in Djibouti.
* Bassel Barakat contributed to this report from Ankara.
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