Residents of Khartoum woke to artillery and rocket fire on Sunday, hours after an airstrike in the south of the city killed at least 20 civilians including two children, according to Sudanese activists.
“The death toll from the aerial bombardment” in southern Khartoum “has risen to 20 civilian fatalities,” according to a statement by the neighbourhood’s resistance committee. It is one of many volunteer groups that used to organise pro-democracy demonstrations and now provide assistance to families caught in the crossfire between the army and paramilitary fighters.
In an earlier statement, it said the victims included two children, and that more fatalities went unrecorded as “their bodies could not be moved to the hospital because they were severely burned or torn to pieces in the bombing”.
Since fighting broke out between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April, about 5,000 people have been killed, according to estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.
The Sudanese armed forces control the skies and have carried out regular airstrikes, while RSF fighters dominate the capital’s streets.
Western countries have accused the paramilitaries and allied militias of killings based on ethnicity in the western Darfur region, and the international criminal court has opened a new investigation into alleged war crimes.
The army has also been accused of abuses, including an airstrike on 8 July that killed about two dozen civilians.
More than half of Sudan’s 48 million people require humanitarian aid and protection, and 6 million are “one step away from famine”, according to the United Nations.
The UN says it has been able to get aid to millions of those in need despite insecurity, looting and bureaucratic obstacles.
The war has internally displaced about 3.8 million people, it says, and another million have crossed borders into neighbouring countries.
Among the displaced are nearly 2.8 million people from Khartoum, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration. That is more than half the capital’s prewar population of about 5 million.
Those who remain shelter from the crossfire, rationing water and electricity.
Resistance committees have been some of the only sources of relief in Khartoum, helping dig survivors out of the rubble of bombed buildings, braving gunfire on the streets to deliver medicine and documenting atrocities committed by both sides.
After nearly five months, the violence shows no signs of abating.
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