Scores killed in attacks across greater Khartoum

At least 56 people have been killed in attacks across greater Khartoum on Saturday, according to a medical source and Sudanese activists.

Artillery shelling and air strikes from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group hit a busy market in Omdurman, overwhelming the city’s al-Nao Hospital and killing at least 54 people. 

“The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that’s why the victims and the wounded are so many,” a survivor told AFP.

The local Emergency Response Room (ERR) said two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area across the Nile in Khartoum.

The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023. The fighting has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions from their homes and pushed half of the population into hunger.

Last week, a drone attack by the RSF on the main hospital in el-Fasher, a besieged town in western Sudan, killed 70 people and wounded 19 others, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“As the only functional hospital in el-Fasher, the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital provides services which include gyn-obstetrics, internal medicine, surgery and paediatrics, along with a nutrition stabilisation centre,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X after the Friday strike.

“At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” he added.

While the WHO chief did not specify who was responsible for the attack, local officials attributed it to the RSF.

Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi said on X that an RSF drone had struck the emergency department of the hospital in the capital of North Darfur, killing patients – including women and children.

The RSF launched an assault on el-Fasher following the expiration of an ultimatum it had issued to the Sudanese army and its allied forces to withdraw from the North Darfur capital.