The paramilitary group’s leader’s trip comes a week after his troops captured the North African country’s second-largest city.

The leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has visited neighboring Ethiopia.

Dagalo, known as “Hemedti,” landed in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Thursday, the second stop on his first known public trip abroad since war broke out on April 15.

The trip comes weeks after RSF fighters captured the country’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, once a hub for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the eight-month war.

Thursday’s meeting was preceded by Hemedti’s meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at Museveni’s country house on Wednesday.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said he had hosted the RSF leader and his delegation “for a discussion on ensuring peace and stability in Sudan” and posted pictures of them sitting at a restaurant table.

Hemedti was received by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen at the airport in Addis Ababa.

Hemedti posted pictures of his arrival and meeting Demeke on X.

“We discussed the need to bring this war to a quick end, the historic crisis in Sudan, and how we can best alleviate the needs of the Sudanese people,” Hemedti wrote.

Talks brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia have failed to end the conflict, which has killed more than 12,000 people and displaced more than seven million people flee from their homes. Last month, Human Rights Watch accused the RSF of carrying out mass killings of ethnic groups in Darfur.

UAE, an important ally

Posts from Hemedti and the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry showed him disembarking from a plane operated by Royal Jet, a United Arab Emirates airline, that had flown from Abu Dhabi to Uganda’s Entebbe airport on Wednesday morning, according to flight records.

The United Arab Emirates has always been Hemedti’s main foreign ally current conflict.

In November, a Sudanese general accused the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF and funneling supplies through countries such as Uganda. The UAE responded that it supported diplomatic dialogue in Sudan and an end to the conflict, while Uganda said the allegations were false.

Hemedti is expected to visit Kenya next, a source close to RSF told the Agence France-Presse news agency. Al Jazeera was unable to confirm the planned stop through official sources.

“After visiting Uganda and Ethiopia, Hemedti will travel to Nairobi to try to rally IGAD member states to his cause before traveling to Djibouti to meet General al-Burhan,” the source was quoted as saying Abdel Fattah quotes al-Burhan, who Leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces.

IGAD, the Intergovernmental Authority on Developmentis a bloc representing eight East African countries. She has been trying to bring al-Burhan and Hemedti together since the beginning of the war.

Both warring parties in Sudan have been accused of war crimes.