Ethiopia and Sudan traded tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions on Wednesday, two Sudanese government officials told AFP, as a row deepened over allegations that Addis Ababa aided Sudanese rebel forces.
After Ethiopia gave six Sudanese diplomats 48 hours to leave, Sudan responded on Wednesday by ordering Ethiopian diplomats out, they said.
It comes after Sudan’s army-aligned government, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), said it had identified dozens of RSF attacks from Ethiopian territory.
“Ethiopia declared on November 2 the employees of the Sudanese consulate in Asosa in the Benishangul region persona non grata and gave them 48 hours to leave its territory,” a government official told AFP, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media. Another official said Sudan responded by “informing the staff of the Ethiopian consulate in Gedaref”, near the border, “that they were persona non grata and gave them 48 hours to leave the country”.
Ethiopian authorities did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
Sudan and Ethiopia have repeatedly traded accusations of supporting rebel groups in each other’s territory.
On Sunday, Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council issued a report it said documented 70 attacks from inside Ethiopian territory this year by the RSF.
It said it filed complaints against Ethiopia at the UN Security Council and the African Union.
The Sudanese government official called the consular staff’s expulsion an “escalation” after Sudan documented “Ethiopia’s support for the RSF militia, including by allowing them to use its land to attack Sudanese cities and civilian infrastructure”.
The report said 187 one-way attack drones were launched from Ethiopian territory, killing and injuring nearly 500 civilians.
Ethiopia, which denies the accusations, has accused the Sudanese army of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, an allegation Khartoum rejects.
Overnight on Wednesday, residents of Al-Damazin, the capital of Sudan’s Blue Nile state across the border from Asosa, reported hearing drone strikes throughout the night.
The RSF has advanced through Blue Nile towards Al-Damazin throughout this year in an offensive that has displaced some 100,000 people, almost half of them sheltering in the city, according to the UN.
Escalating drone strikes, deployed by both the army and the RSF across the country, killed more than 1,100 people in the first half of this year, according to UN figures.
Since it began in April 2023, Sudan’s war has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
By Agencies
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