WAD MADANI – Flames engulfed Sudan’s capital on Sunday and paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters for a second straight day, witnesses said, as fighting raged for six months.
“There are currently clashes around the army headquarters with different types of weapons,” a Khartoum resident who did not want to be named told AFP.
Other witnesses in southern Khartoum said they heard “huge bangs” as the army fired artillery at Rapid Support Forces paramilitary bases.
Witnesses also reported fighting in the town of El-Obeid, 350 kilometers south.
Nawal Mohammed, 44, said fighting between the regular army and paramilitaries on Saturday and Sunday was “the fiercest since the start of the war.”
Although her family lives at least three kilometers from the nearest clashes, Mohammed said “doors and windows shook from the force of the explosions” while several buildings in central Khartoum were set ablaze.
In social media posts verified by AFP, users shared footage of flames engulfing landmarks on Khartoum’s skyline, including the Ministry of Justice and the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower – a conical, glass-fronted building that had become the city’s landmark.
Other posts showed buildings — their windows broken and walls charred or riddled with bullets — smoldering.
“It’s disturbing to see these institutions destroyed in this way,” Badr al-Din Babiker, a resident of the capital’s east, told AFP.
Since war broke out on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, nearly 7,500 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Civilians and aid workers have warned that the true toll is far higher, with many of those injured or killed never making it to hospitals or morgues.
A committee of volunteer pro-democracy lawyers said on Sunday that dozens of civilians had been killed in fighting in Khartoum since Friday, signifying “continued disregard for international humanitarian law.”
“We are working to determine the number of civilian casualties” from the “indiscriminate shelling,” the group said in a statement.
Source : www.straitstimes.com