Turkey to move its Sudan embassy after ambassador’s car hit

Turkey will move its embassy from Khartoum to Port Sudan after gunfire on ambassador’s car, foreign minister says.

Turkey will move its embassy in Khartoum to Port Sudan after the Turkish ambassador’s car was hit by gunfire, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said.

“With recommendation from the transitional government and Sudan army, we decided to move our embassy temporarily to Port Sudan for security reasons,” Cavusoglu told reporters in the southern city of Antalya on Saturday.

No casualties were reported and the source of the gunfire that hit Ismail Cobanoglu’s vehicle was unclear, said Turkish diplomatic sources quoted by Anadolu Agancy. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The warring sides blamed each for the attack on the ambassador’s car.

Fighting between two rival generals – army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohammed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo – broke out on April 15. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of others wounded in the conflict.

A disagreement had been fomenting in recent months between the two sides concerning the integration of the RSF into the armed forces — a key condition of Sudan’s transition agreement with political groups.

Sudan has been without a functioning government since late 2021 when the military dismissed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s transitional government and declared a state of emergency in a move decried by political forces as a “coup.”

The transitional period, which started in August 2019 after the removal of longtime President Omar al-Bashir, was scheduled to end with elections in early 2024.