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.”