A group of volunteer rescuers in Sudan have reported that an airstrike conducted by the military on a market in Khartoum has left 23 people dead.
The market is located close to one of the primary camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been engaged in combat with the military as part of a civil war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.
“Twenty-three people were confirmed dead and more than 40 others wounded” and taken to hospital after “military air strikes on Saturday afternoon on the main market” in southern Khartoum, the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms said in a post on Facebook.
Intense fighting has erupted since Friday around Khartoum, a city held mainly by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with the military launching air strikes in the city’s centre and south.
Eyewitnesses report that the military is advancing towards Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes broke out on Saturday.
Since the outbreak of war in April 2023 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the paramilitary forces have effectively pushed the army out of Khartoum.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at least 20,000 people have been killed in the civil war, though some estimates suggest the toll could be as high as 150,000. The conflict has also resulted in the world’s largest displacement crisis, with over 10 million people—about one-fifth of Sudan’s population—forced to flee their homes, as reported by UN figures.
In August, an assessment backed by the UN declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur, near El-Fasher. The government, which is loyal to the army, is currently based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where it has maintained control.
Meanwhile, the RSF has taken over nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, wreaking havoc in the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and advancing into the army-controlled southeast.