Faith Nyasuguta
At least 25 civilians were killed in attacks in Khartoum over the weekend, as the violence showed no signs of abating after nearly five months of war.
Some five civilians died on Sunday when bombs “fell on their homes” in the Sudanese capital, a medical source said, a day after an airstrike in the south of the city killed at least 20.
Residents said the city was pummelled by artillery and rocket fire again on Sunday.
“The death toll from the aerial bombardment” on Saturday “has risen to 20 civilian fatalities”, according to a statement from the neighborhood’s resistance committee. They are among many volunteer groups that used to organize pro-democracy demonstrations and now provide assistance to families caught in the line of fire.
In an earlier statement, the committee said that the victims included two children, and that further fatalities went unrecorded as “their bodies could not be moved to the hospital because they were severely burned or torn to pieces in the bombing”.
Since April 15, when fighting broke out between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), about 5,000 people have been killed, according to estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.
The Sudanese armed forces control the skies and have carried out regular airstrikes, while RSF fighters dominate the capital’s streets.
Western nations have accused the paramilitaries and allied militias of killings based on ethnicity in the western Darfur region, and the international criminal court has opened a new investigation into alleged war crimes.
The army has also been accused of abuses, including an airstrike on July 8 that killed about two dozen civilians.
Over 50 per cent of Sudan’s 48 million people “require humanitarian aid and protection, and 6 million are “one step away from famine”, according to the United Nations.
According to the UN, it has been able to get aid to millions of those in need despite insecurity, looting and bureaucratic obstacles.
So far, the war has internally displaced about 3.8 million people, it says, and another million have crossed borders into neighbouring countries.
Among the displaced are nearly 2.8 million people from Khartoum, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration. That is more than half the capital’s prewar population of about 5 million.
Those who remain shelter from the crossfire, rationing water and electricity.
Resistance committees have been some of the only sources of relief in Khartoum, helping dig survivors out of the rubble of bombed buildings, braving gunfire on the streets to deliver medicine and documenting atrocities committed by both sides.
RELATED:
