Horn News Hub | August 15, 2026
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said Thursday that fighters captured during clashes near the Blue Nile State town of Kurmuk included a minor from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, describing the detainees as mercenaries linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The paramilitary group presented the capture as additional evidence that Tigrayan combatants are participating in Sudan’s civil war.
The RSF’s claim could not be independently verified. Kurmuk, which sits near Sudan’s borders with Ethiopia and South Sudan, has changed hands repeatedly this year amid fighting between the RSF and allied factions and Sudan’s army. In late April, forces belonging to the Sudan Founding Alliance, a coalition that includes the RSF and elements of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North, reported capturing several foreign combatants during intense clashes near Kurmuk and Al Kili, including a fighter of alleged Tigrayan origin whose questioning pointed to a recruitment pipeline linked to TPLF remnants and former combatants from the 2020 to 2022 Tigray war
Reporting on the broader dynamic has also pointed to an organized presence of Tigrayan fighters, known as Army 70, operating alongside Sudan’s army. Analysts have described the arrangement as functioning in a mercenary like fashion, with financial incentives drawing fighters into a conflict separate from their original cause, while TPLF leadership has extended political and material support to Sudan’s army as part of a broader calculation involving Ethiopia’s federal government. That reporting also noted Eritrean forces are believed to operate alongside these units under a parallel arrangement.
Separately, allegations of child recruitment inside Tigray have drawn renewed attention this year. Human Rights Watch said children as young as 15 have been forced to fight since April, when the armed wing of the TPLF resumed clashes with Ethiopian government forces, adding that the campaign has also targeted men and boys in the streets, offices, homes and at gold mining sites.
The rights group called on Tigrayan authorities to end the campaign and release those unlawfully recruited.
Under international law, the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is prohibited, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies the recruitment or active use of children under 15 in hostilities as a war crime.
The TPLF has previously denied similar accusations, saying children linked to its forces are used only to gather weapons rather than take part in combat.
Kurmuk itself has been the site of repeated reversals in Sudan’s war. The RSF said it retook the town this week after Sudan’s army had recaptured it in July, and mass graves containing dozens of bodies were discovered in the area following the army’s earlier recapture.
