Sudan's army chief returned home Tuesday after visiting Egypt on his first trip abroad since the outbreak of war in April, with the latest violence killing dozens of civilians in battle-scarred Darfur.
As Abdel Fattah al-Burhan travelled for talks with key ally Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, medics and witnesses said 39 civilians were killed, most of them women and children, in shelling of Nyala, the South Darfur state capital where fighting between the army and paramilitary forces has intensified.
Burhan was back in Sudan's Red Sea city of Port Sudan late Tuesday, the country's highest authority, the Sovereign Council said, after he swapped his trademark military fatigues for a suit and tie for his flight to El Alamein on Egypt's north coast earlier the same day.
While there, he said his forces faced "rebel groups who have committed war crimes in their attempt to seize power".
