Sudan: Deadly Air Strike on Khartoum Market
A devastating air strike carried out by the Sudanese military on Saturday afternoon on a marketplace in southern Khartoum has left 23 people dead and more than 40 others wounded, according to a volunteer rescue network. The market is near a main camp in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military in a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The violence has been ongoing since Friday, with fierce fighting erupting in various parts of the city, including the centre and south. The military has been pounding these areas from the air, with eyewitnesses reporting clashes in Omdurman, a nearby town, on Saturday.
This is just the latest episode in a conflict that has been raging since April 2023, when war broke out between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The paramilitaries have largely pushed the army out of Khartoum, but the war has had a devastating impact on the country, with the World Health Organization estimating that at least 20,000 people have been killed.
The conflict has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis, with over 10 million people, approximately a fifth of Sudan’s population, forced to flee their homes. A UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur, near the city of El-Fasher.
The government loyal to the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, while the RSF has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, central Sudan’s agricultural heartland, and parts of the army-controlled southeast.
The humanitarian situation in Sudan remains dire, with thousands of people displaced and many more struggling to access basic necessities like food, water, and medical care. As the conflict continues, the international community is calling for an end to the violence and a peaceful resolution to the crisis.