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A United Nations panel said Monday it had no "credible evidence" of Sudanese paramilitaries fighting in conflict-wracked Libya for military strongman Khalifa Haftar as alleged by some media outlets.
Several Libyan and regional media outlets had claimed in recent months that hundreds of Sudanese paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were deployed in Libya to fight alongside Haftar's Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF).
But a UN panel of experts on Sudan dismissed these claims in a report released on Monday.
"The panel has no credible evidence of the presence of Rapid Support Forces in Libya," the report said.
It said there were, however, many Arabs from Sudan's conflict-wracked region of Darfur and neighboring Chad fighting as "individual mercenaries" in Libya and they belonged to the same tribes that made up a majority of RSF personnel.
The UN experts' report also said several Darfuri armed groups operating in Libya "have participated in various clashes and military operations alongside Libyan warring parties."
Libya has been mired in chaos since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with the main cleavage nowadays pitting Haftar's LAAF against a UN recognized government in Tripoli.
(Cover: Protesters hold a banner reading "Stop war in Libya, Haftar and mercenaries" during a protest near the chancellery during the peace summit on Libya at the Chancellery in Berlin, January 19, 2020. /AFP)
(AFP)
