Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allies have agreed to set up a parallel government, sources said Sunday, despite warnings such a move could further fragment the war-ravaged country.

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied political and armed groups have signed a charter to establish a parallel government, in a move that risks deepening the country’s fragmentation amid a nearly two-year civil war. The agreement, signed late on Saturday in Kenya, aims to create a “government of peace and unity.”

The RSF has seized most of the western Darfur region and swathes of the Kordofan region in an almost-two-year war, but it is being pushed back from central Sudan by the Sudanese army, which has condemned the formation of a parallel government.

The formation of this administration had long been hinted from last year as Nairobi pushed for a third track to halt war in Sudan.