KHARTOUM, Sudan

Chairman of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan on Wednesday departed for New York to attend the ongoing 78th session of the UN General Assembly, where he will also deliver a speech and meet with several international leaders on the sidelines of the major international event.

Al-Burhan is leading a Sudanese delegation to the General Assembly, where he is scheduled to deliver a speech on Friday, the Transitional Sovereignty Council said in a statement.

Sudan's leader will meet with a number of world leaders and representatives from international and regional organizations on the sidelines of the General Assembly to discuss "ways of bilateral cooperation and the role of multilateral cooperation within the framework of the United Nations, to build a more stable future."

More than 140 world leaders and representatives are taking part in this year’s General Assembly session, which began on Tuesday.

This is the seventh foreign trip of al-Burhan, who is also the army chief, since war broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April. He previously visited Egypt, South Sudan, Qatar, Eritrea, Uganda and Türkiye.

According to UN figures, since the start of the war, thousands of people have been killed and more than seven million displaced, especially in the capital Khartoum, and Darfur state.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi