PORT SUDAN: The UN condemned on Sunday a series of attacks on civilians across Sudan, including the shelling of a market in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman that killed at least 60 people.
In a statement, United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan Clementine Nkweta-Salami described Saturday’s attack on Sabreen market and other residential areas in Omdurman as “horrific” and “indiscriminate.”
According to pro-democracy lawyers, artillery fire from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit the market in army-controlled Omdurman.
Across the Nile in the capital itself, an air strike on an RSF-held area killed two civilians and wounded dozens, rescuers said.
Sudan’s army and the RSF have been locked in a fierce power struggle since April 2023, with the fighting intensifying this month as the army seeks to reclaim the capital.
Nkweta-Salami also deplored reports of civilian killings between Thursday and Saturday in North Kordofan province in southern Sudan as well as in the vast western region of Darfur.
On Thursday, the army said it had recaptured the strategic North Kordofan city of Umm Rawaba from paramilitaries who had held it since May 2023.
Eyewitnesses reported RSF artillery and rocket attacks on Saturday on El-Obeid, North Kordofan’s capital, with several homes set ablaze.
The Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees, a civil society group, also accused the army on Thursday of carrying out air strikes on the town of Manawashi, 78 kilometers (48 miles) north of South Darfur’s capital Nyala.
In North Darfur, the RSF attacked areas west of the state’s besieged capital El-Fasher on Thursday, looting homes, killing civilians and forcing mass displacement, activists said.
Both the RSF and Sudan’s military have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
“The suffering of Sudanese civilians has gone on for too long,” Nkweta-Salami said.
“It’s long past time to end this war.”
UN condemns deadly attacks on civilians in Sudan
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UN condemns deadly attacks on civilians in Sudan
- Sudan’s army and the RSF have been locked in a fierce power struggle since April 2023
- Deadly shelling of a market in Omdurman city killed at least 60 people
UN rights chief shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
