At least 40 people have been killed in an aerial bombardment against a popular market located in the south of the metropolitan area of ??Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where intense fighting is taking place between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group. ). It is the highest death toll in a single incident since the war in Sudan began in April.
In a statement posted on Facebook, the Khartoum South Emergency Room said the massacre occurred in the popular Quro market, located in the south of the metropolitan belt of the Sudanese capital. He added that the number of deaths could increase, while making an urgent appeal to all medical personnel in the area to provide help to the injured.
The area is largely home to day laborers who lost their jobs after the conflict broke out and are too poor to face the enormous cost of escaping the capital.
In a statement, the FAR blamed the Sudanese army for the bombing, as well as other recent attacks. The Sudanese army denied responsibility and blamed the FAR. “We only directed our attacks at enemy groups and stations in different areas,” General Nabil Abdallah told Reuters.
As the war between the army and paramilitaries approaches the five-month mark, neither side is declaring victory or showing concrete signs of seeking a negotiated solution.
While the FAR has been deployed in residential areas of the capital, Khartoum, and neighboring Bahri and Omdurman, the army has used its advantage of heavy artillery and airstrikes to try to push them back, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties.
Fighting has intensified in recent days in Khartoum. The military leader, General Abdelfatah al Burhan, has stated on several occasions that his troops have managed to quell the rebellion started by the FAR on April 15. In recent days, Efe reports, he has traveled to Egypt, South Sudan and Qatar to gather political support and seek sources of financing.
So far, the conflict between the Army and the paramilitaries has left nearly 5,000 dead, according to different statistics, while it has forced more than 5.1 million people to move inside and outside of Sudan, according to the UN, which points out that almost 70% of the people who have had to leave their homes are from Khartoum.
With most hospitals closed and no local government in place, volunteers are struggling to document the full extent of the destruction. «Khartoum has been at war for almost six months. But still, the volunteers… are shocked and overwhelmed by the scale of the horror that hit the city today,” Marie Burto, emergency coordinator for the NGO Doctors Without Borders, said yesterday. On Friday, the Emergency Room in southern Khartoum said in a statement that the hospital, one of the few still functioning in the city, was on the brink of closure as supplies ran out.
The army and the FAR started this war after tensions arose over the integration of their troops in a new democratic transition. Although several countries have begun mediation efforts, none have so far managed to stop the fighting.
