At least 56 killed as fighting grips Sudan’s capital
At least 56 people were killed in greater Khartoum on Saturday due to artillery shelling and air strikes, a medical source and Sudanese activists reported.
Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023 that has intensified this month with the army fighting to take back control of the capital.
RSF shelling killed 54 and injured 158 people at a busy market in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, on Saturday, overwhelming the city’s Al-Nao Hospital, according to a medical source and the health ministry.
“The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that’s why the victims and the wounded are so many,” one survivor told AFP.
The RSF denied carrying out the attack.
Across the Nile in Khartoum proper, two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area, said the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating emergency care across Sudan.
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Although the RSF has used drones in attacks including on Saturday, the fighter jets of the regular armed forces maintain a monopoly on air strikes.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
In addition to killing tens of thousands of people, the war has uprooted more than 12 million and decimated Sudan’s fragile infrastructure, forcing most health facilities out of service.
A volunteer at Al-Nao Hospital told AFP it faced dire shortages of “shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded”.
The hospital is one of the last medical facilities operating in Omdurman and has been repeatedly attacked.
According to the Sudanese doctors’ union, one shell fell “just metres away from Al-Nao hospital” on Saturday.
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