A drone attack on an open market has killed at least 43 people in Sudan as rival troops battle
CAIRO — A drone attack Sunday on an open market south of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, killed at least 43 people, activists and a medical group said, as the military and a powerful rival paramilitary group battle for control of the country.
More than 55 others were wounded in the attack in Khartoum’s May neighborhood, where paramilitary forces battling the military were heavily deployed, the Sudan Doctors’ Union said in a statement. The casualties were taken to Bashair University Hospital.
The Resistance Committees, an activist group that helps organize humanitarian assistance, posted footage on social media showing bodies wrapped in white sheets in an open yard at the hospital.
Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-April, when tensions between the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, burst into open fighting.
The RSF blamed the military’s air force for Sunday’s attack, though it was not immediately possible to independently verify the claim. The military, meanwhile, said Sunday afternoon that it didn’t target civilians, describing the RSF accusations as “false and misleading claims.”
Indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes by both factions are not uncommon in Sudan’s war, which has made the Greater Khartoum area a battleground.
The conflict has since spread to several parts of the country. In the Greater Khartoum area, which includes the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, RSF troops have commandeered civilian homes and turned them into operational bases. The military responded by bombing these residential areas, rights groups and activists say.
In the western Darfur region — the scene of a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s — the conflict has morphed into ethnic violence, with the RSF and allied Arab militias attacking ethnic African groups, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
Fierce clashes ensued over the weekend in al-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, following an attack on a military facility by the RSF, local media reported.
The war has killed more than 4,000 people, according to August figures from the United Nations.
