CAIRO: Rights activists and local responders said scores of civilians had been killed at sites across Sudan in the past week as the army escalates air strikes nearly 18 months into its war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
While the RSF controls almost half of the country, the army has recently deployed its superior air power to help it regain some territory in the capital Khartoum, and to pound other areas occupied by its rivals.
Sudan’s war, which erupted from a power struggle between the army and the RSF ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule and free elections, has already created the world’s largest displacement crisis and caused famine.
Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese human rights group, said hundreds of people had been killed in such strikes across the country. It did not state the period of time for that casualty toll but said it demonstrated “the armed forces’ indifference to protecting defenseless civilians.”
In Hasaheisa, a town in El Gezira state south of Khartoum where the RSF has stationed many fighters, airstrikes killed or injured over 100 people on Monday, Emergency Lawyers said.
An activist from the area said at least 38 people were killed, mostly children. He shared video with Reuters of the aftermath of the strike appearing to show a residential area.
In the North Kordofan town of Humrat Alsheikh, west of Khartoum, an airstrike on Oct. 5 killed 30 people and injured more than 100, Emergency Lawyers said, posting a video that appeared to show a market that had been hit.
Reuters could not independently verify the footage in either video.
A day earlier, a strike that hit another market in Al-Koma in North Darfur killed 61 people, according to the local emergency response room. Those killed included 13 children, UN agency UNICEF said.
The army, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has accused the RSF of occupying civilian homes and launching attacks from civilian areas. The RSF denies using civilians as human shields.
FIGHTING LIKELY TO INTENSIFY
Yale Humanitarian Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, said the army had also carried out a significant campaign of bombardment in RSF-controlled areas of Al-Fashir, a North Darfur city that the paramilitary has besieged for months.
The army’s advance in the capital, which began in late September, has also led to reported casualties. Radhouane Nouicer, Sudan expert for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed alarm at reports, some of which circulated on social media, of the summary execution of 70 young men by forces allied to the army in Bahri, part of the greater capital region.
Fighting is expected to intensify with the end of rains that had halted the RSF’s advance in southeast Sudan. The RSF’s leader called on troops to report to their units and said they were prepared to fight on for years.
Overall death tolls from the war are highly uncertain due to the collapse of health and government services, and lack of access for aid workers. Both sides have received material support from external supporters.
“The uptick in fighting and reported civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure are all happening while more weapons are finding their way to the warring parties,” said Mohamed Osman of Human Rights Watch.
Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes
https://arab.news/g9gxq
Activists report spike in mass civilian deaths after Sudan’s army ups airstrikes
- Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese human rights group, said hundreds of people had been killed in such strikes across the country
- It did not state the period of time for that casualty toll but said it demonstrated “the armed forces’ indifference to protecting defenseless civilians“
Sudan ‘lost all sources of revenue’ in the war: finance minister to AFP
- Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment
- Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders”
PORT SUDAN: Widespread destruction, massive military spending and plummeting oil and gold revenues have left Sudan’s economy in “very difficult times,” army-aligned finance minister Gibril Ibrahim said, nearly three years into the army’s war with rival paramilitary forces.
In an interview with AFP from his office in Port Sudan, Ibrahim said the government is eyeing deals for Red Sea ports and private investment to help rebuild infrastructure.
This week, Sudan’s prime minister announced the government’s official return to Khartoum, recaptured last year, but Ibrahim’s ministry is among those yet to fully return.
Dressed in combat uniform, the former rebel leader said Sudan, already one of the world’s poorest countries before the war, “lost all sources of state revenue in the beginning of the war,” when the Rapid Support Forces overtook the capital Khartoum and its surroundings.
“Most of the industry, most of the big companies and all of the economic activity was concentrated in the center,” he said, saying the heartland had accounted for some 80 percent of state revenue.
Ibrahim’s ex-rebel group the Justice and Equality Movement once battled Khartoum’s government but it has fought on the army’s side as part of the Joint Forces coalition of armed groups.
- Smuggling -
Sudan, rich in oil, gold deposits and arable land, is currently suffering the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over half of its population in need of aid to survive.
Gold production is rising year-on-year, but “unfortunately, much of it has been smuggled... across borders,” he said.
Of the 70 tons produced in 2025, only “20 tons have been exported through official channels.”
In 2024, Sudan produced 64 tons of gold, bringing in only $1.57 billion to the state’s depleted coffers, with much of the revenue spilling out via smuggling networks.
Agricultural exports have fallen 43 percent, with much of the country’s productive gum Arabic, sesame and peanut-growing regions in paramilitary hands, in the western Darfur and southern Kordofan regions.
Sudan’s livestock industry, also based predominantly in Darfur, has lost 55 percent of its exports, he said.
Since the RSF captured the army’s last holdout position in Darfur in October, the war’s worst fighting has shifted east to the oil-rich Kordofan region.
While both sides scramble for control of the territory, the country’s oil revenues have dropped by more than 50 percent — its most productive refinery, Al-Jaili near Khartoum, severely damaged.
- ‘Reconstruction’ -
Determined to defeat the RSF, authorities allocated 40 percent of last year’s budget to the war effort, up from 36 percent in 2024, according to Ibrahim, who did not specify amounts.
Yet the cost of reconstruction in areas regained by the army is immense: in December 2024, the government estimated it would need $200 billion to rebuild.
Authorities are currently eyeing public-private partnership, with firms that “are ready to spend money” including on infrastructure, Ibrahim said.
Sudan’s long Red Sea coast has over the years drawn the interest of foreign actors eager for a base on the vital waterway, through which around 12 percent of global trade passes.
“We will see which partner is the best to build a port,” the minister said, listing both Saudi Arabia and Qatar as “the main applicants.”
The Russians, for their part, had also wanted “a small port where they can have supplies,” he said, adding that “they didn’t go ahead with that yet.”
As the war rages on, Sudan shoulders a massive public debt bill, which in 2023 reached 253 percent of GDP, before falling slightly to 221 percent in 2025, according to figures reported by the International Monetary Fund.
Sudan has known only triple-digit annual inflation for years. Figures for 2025 stood at 151 percent — down from a 2021 peak of 358.
The currency has also collapsed, going from trading before the war at 570 Sudanese pounds against the dollar, to 3500 in 2026, according to the black-market rate.
Ibrahim, 71, first joined the government in 2021 as part of a short-lived transitional administration. He retained his position through a military coup later that year.
He is among several Sudanese officials sanctioned by Washington in its attempt to “limit Islamist influence within Sudan and curtail Iran’s regional activities.”
