PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A Sudanese network of volunteer rescuers said that 28 civilians were killed Sunday when a fuel station in an area of Khartoum under paramilitary control came under shelling.
The Sudanese army, which has been fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, has been advancing toward the capital in recent weeks, in a bid to regain control of Khartoum.
On Sunday, a fuel station in RSF-held southern Khartoum was hit by shelling, said the South Belt Emergency Response Room.
The youth-led volunteer group said “28 people were confirmed dead” and “the number of injured reached 37, including 29 burns cases” and some shrapnel injuries.
Early in the war, which has pitted army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against the forces of his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitaries had largely pushed the army out of Khartoum.
The government, loyal to Burhan, is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has retained control.
The war has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced over 11 million, creating what the United Nations has described as the world’s largest displacement crisis.
In late November, the Sudanese army said it had retaken the Sennar state capital, Sinja, south of Khartoum, five months after paramilitaries had seized it.
Sinja is a strategic area as it lies on a key road linking army-controlled areas of eastern and central Sudan.
The RSF meanwhile has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.