Almost 200 killed in attacks on Darfur market and Omdurman as violence escalates in Sudan

Latest civilian casualties underline brutality of 19-month civil war

A woman and baby at the Zamzam displacement camp in Darfur, Sudan. Reuters

Two days of rising violence have led to the deaths of almost 200 people in Sudan as the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) strike civilian areas, witnesses, authorities and war monitoring groups said.

They were the latest incidents in which non-combatants have been killed by both sides in the 19-month conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 10 million people, three million of whom have found refuge outside the country.

The deadliest strike was in an army-held part of Omdurman on Tuesday, when a bus filled with passengers was directly hit by an artillery shell. All 22 people on board were killed, according to the witnesses and war monitoring groups.

Videos shared online showed the mangled and charred skeleton of the bus and debris spread across the street after the strike, with bodies covered with sheets.

The army-backed governor of the Sudanese capital, Ahmed Osman Hamza, blamed the shelling of the bus on the RSF and confirmed that everyone on board was killed. He said the shell was one of several fired by the RSF to hit the capital on Tuesday, killing more than 60 people.

Most of Omdurman, which together with the cities of Khartoum and Bahri make up the Sudanese capital's greater region, is under army control. The RSF controls most of Khartoum and Bahri.

Residents have frequently reported shelling across the Nile since the army captured large swathes of Omdurman in March. The shells and shrapnel often hit homes on both banks of the river. On Tuesday, witnesses told AFP that artillery shelling was striking Omdurman from multiple fronts.

“We haven't seen bombing this intense in six months,” said one witness, who requested anonymity.

A day earlier, an army air strike on an outdoor market in the North Darfur town of Kabkabiya killed more than 100 people, the pro-democracy Emergency Lawyers group said.

“The air strike took place on the town's weekly market day, where residents from various nearby villages had gathered to shop, resulting in the death of more than 100 people and injury of hundreds, including women and children,” said the group, which has been documenting human rights abuses during the conflict.

The army denied responsibility for the attack, while insisting that it had the right to target any location used by the RSF for military purposes.

Videos shared online of the air strike site purported to show bodies, including of children, partially buried under debris and people searching the rubble with their bare hands in search of survivors. Others were helping the wounded as women and children wept and screamed in the background.

Both the army and the RSF have been accused by the UN and international rights groups of committing war crimes since the conflict broke out in April 2023. The RSF has been singled out over ethnically-motivated killings, rape and looting. The army is mostly accused of killing thousands in air strikes targeting RSF positions in densely populated areas.

Armed Forces commander Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, Sudan's de facto leader, has repeatedly vowed to continue fighting until victory, spurning repeated initiatives by foreign powers to negotiate an end to the war, which has left about 26 million people – more than half the population – facing acute hunger.

Gen Al Burhan's former ally Gen Mohamed Dagalo, the RSF commander, maintains that the army has forged a war alliance with Islamists loyal to the regime of Omar Al Bashir, who was ousted amid a popular uprising in 2019. Gen Al Burhan and Gen Dagalo jointly derailed the country's democratic transition when they seized power in a 2021 coup but soon became embroiled in a struggle to dominate the vast Afro-Arab nation.