Faith Nyasuguta
An air strike in the Sudanese city of Omdurman on Saturday killed at least 22 people with an unspecified number of people injured as the country witnessed three months of fighting between the country’s rival generals.
The attack, was termed as one of the deadliest air raids yet in the three months of fighting in the neighbouring city of the capital, Khartoum, according to a brief statement by the health ministry, reported the Associated Press.
Video footage posted by the ministry showed dead bodies on the ground with sheets covering them and people trying to pull the dead from the rubble.
The attack comes just a month after an airstrike killing at least 17 people including five children in Khartoum as the conflict pits the military against a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.
The RSF blamed the military for the Saturday attack, one of the deadliest in the fighting in urban areas of the capital and elsewhere in Sudan, as per the report. The military has reportedly attempted to cut off a crucial supply line for the paramilitary force there.
Two Omdurman residents, however, said that it was difficult to determine which side was responsible for the attack. As per the residents, the military’s aircraft have repeatedly targeted RSF troops in the area while RSF and the paramilitary troops have used drones and anti-aircraft weapons against the military.
During the Saturday attacks, the military was hitting the RSF which used people’s houses as shields and the RSF fired anti-aircraft rounds at the attacking warplanes, Abdel-Rahman, a resident told the news agency.
“The area is like hell … fighting around the clock and people are not able to leave,” he said.
The conflict in the African country broke out in mid-April after mounting tensions between the military, chaired by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government.
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