Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces traded fire Monday across the Nile River in the capital Khartoum, witnesses said, seven months into a war that rights groups say has been rife with atrocities.
Artillery and rocket fire criss-crossed the river between “the army in Omdurman, on the west bank, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum North on the east bank,” a witness told AFP.
The fighting was corroborated by other residents, including local activists who say shelling landing in civilian homes has killed dozens in recent weeks.
Since April, brutal urban warfare has raged between the army, led by Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary RSF, commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Over 10,000 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, and the United Nations says 6.3 million more have been forced to flee their homes.
Negotiations brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia — which resumed this month — have failed to make any headway, as forces grapple for control and refuse to cede territory.
Paramilitary “forces attacked the Wadi Seidna (air) base,” a strategic facility just north of Khartoum, an RSF spokesman said Monday, adding they had destroyed “a C130 military transport plane and an ammunition depot.”
Over 800 kilometers (around 500 miles) southwest, witnesses in the town of Muglad in West Kordofan state reported army troops withdrawing from a base after an RSF attack on the oil-rich area.
The army, which has maintained its monopoly on the skies, sent fighter jets to bomb RSF clusters in Babanusa, 35 kilometers north of Muglad, eyewitnesses told AFP.