WORLD: AIR STRIKES IN KHARTOUM AS SUDAN ARMY ATTACKS PARAMILITARY POSITIONS

Read Time:2 Minute, 14 Second

Agency Report

Eyewitnesses and a military source told AFP that Khartoum was shaken by air strikes and artillery on Thursday as the army struck paramilitary sites throughout Sudan’s capital.

The fighting began before early, according to numerous residents, in what appeared to be the army’s first serious attack in months to reclaim portions of the capital seized by its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

It comes as Sudan is high on the agenda of the United Nations’ main meetings in New York this week.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed worry to army leader Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan “about the escalation of the conflict in Sudan” on the margins of the discussions, the UN said Wednesday.

Sudanese government soldiers were “fighting fiercely against the rebel militia inside Khartoum,” a military source told AFP.

The insider, who requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the media, said army forces had crossed three important bridges over the Nile River, separating army-held portions of the capital from RSF-controlled areas.

Since April 2023, when war broke out between Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, paramilitaries have driven the army almost entirely out of Khartoum.

Following its final major attack in February, the army reclaimed much of Omdurman, the capital’s twin city immediately across the river, as well as a portion of Greater Khartoum.

Several Omdurman residents described “intense artillery shelling” that began early Thursday, with shells landing on residential buildings as military aeroplanes passed overhead.

Since the war began, much of the hardest fighting has taken place in densely populated regions, and both sides have been accused of attacking residential areas without regard for civilians.

The battle has already killed tens of thousands of people, with estimates ranging from 20,000 to 150,000, according to medics.

The UN also claims it has caused the world’s largest displacement crisis.

More than 10 million people — around a fifth of Sudan’s population — have been forced from their homes inside the country and another two million have fled to neighbouring states, according to the United Nations.

Famine has been declared in Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur near the city of El-Fasher, where the RSF last weekend launched a large-scale offensive after months of siege.

El-Fasher is the only one of five state capitals in the vast Darfur region not yet in RSF hands.

In his meeting with Burhan, Guterres said the war “risks a regional spillover,” the UN said.

“People in Sudan have endured 17 months of hell, and the suffering continues to grow,” the UN’s top relief official Joyce Msuya said separately.

AFP