CAIRO - Sudan has declared 15 staff from the United Arab Emirates embassy persona non grata, ordering them to leave the country within 48 hours, the Sudanese state news agency said on Sunday.

The news agency said Sudan's foreign ministry summoned the acting UAE Chargé d'affaires and informed her of the decision. No further details were given.

Late last month, a top Sudanese general said the UAE had been sending supplies to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful paramilitary force at war with the army.

In response, a UAE official said that from the outset of the war, the UAE had "consistently called for de-escalation, a ceasefire, and the initiation of diplomatic dialogue" in Sudan.

The war began in mid-April. It has displaced more than 6.5 million people and triggered waves of ethnically driven killings in Darfur that have been blamed on the RSF and allied Arab militias.

The RSF has denied carrying out ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

Sudan’s warring generals agreed to hold a face-to-face meeting as part of efforts to establish a cease-fire and initiate political talks to end the country’s devastating war, an African regional bloc said Sunday.

Sudan slipped into chaos after soaring tensions between military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, exploded into open fighting in mid-April in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country.

The country has been in turmoil for several years, ever since a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when the two generals joined forces to lead a military coup in October 2021. After they fell out, war followed 18 months later.