WORLD NEWS: AIR STRIKE IN KHARTOUM KILLS 20 CIVILIANS - ACTIVISTS

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Agency Report

Following an air strike in the city’s south that, according to Sudanese activists, killed at least 20 civilians, including two children, Khartoum residents awoke on Sunday to artillery and rocket fire.

The resistance group for the area said in a statement that “the death toll from the aerial bombardment” in southern Khartoum “has risen to 20 civilian fatalities.”

They are one of several volunteer organizations that organized pro-democracy rallies in the past and now aid families who are caught in the crossfire between the military and paramilitary fighters.

In an earlier statement, they said the victims included two children, and warned that more fatalities went unrecorded, as “their bodies could not be moved to the hospital because they were severely burned or torn to pieces in the bombing”.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project estimates that 5,000 people have died since the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces went to war on April 15.

While RSF fighters rule the streets of the capital, the Sudanese Armed Forces have regular airstrikes and control the skies.

The International Criminal Court has launched a new investigation into potential war crimes. Western nations have accused the paramilitaries and affiliated militias of killing people in the western Darfur region based solely on their ethnicity.

The army has also been charged with wrongdoing, including an airstrike on July 8 that claimed the lives of about twenty civilians.

According to the United Nations, six million of Sudan’s 48 million people are “one step away from famine,” and more than half of the country’s 48 million people need humanitarian relief and protection.

The international organisation claims it has been successful in providing help to millions of people in need despite insecurity, looting, and administrative challenges.

According to the UN, over 3.8 million people have been domestically displaced by the war, and another million have crossed borders into neighbouring countries.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, over 2.8 million people from Khartoum are among the displaced. That is more than the five million people who lived in the capital before the war.

Rationing water and electricity, those who are left seek refuge from the oncoming flames.

In Khartoum, resistance committees have been among the sole sources of aid, helping to recover survivors from bombed-out houses, delivering medicine through gunfire in the streets, and recording atrocities committed by both sides.

Violence has continued for almost five months with no signs of stopping.

On Sunday, witnesses claimed that the army had once again been using “artillery and rocket fire” to target RSF positions in northern Khartoum.