Pro-democracy activists in Sudan reported Friday that about 40 people were killed in “violent artillery fire” carried out the previous day by paramilitary forces on Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city.
“So far, the death toll is estimated at 40 civilians and there are more than 50 injured, some seriously,” the Karari Resistance Committee said in a statement posted on social media, blaming the shelling on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
“There is still no precise count of the number of victims in Omdurman,” said the organization, one of hundreds of similar grassroots pro-democracy groups across Sudan that coordinate aid.
“Most of the dead arrived at Al Nao university hospital, others at private hospitals or were buried by their families,” the group added.
The strikes come a day after the RSF was accused of killing more than 104 people, including 35 children, in an attack on Wednesday on the village of Wad al-Noura in Al-Jazira state, to the south of Khartoum.
Sudan has been ravaged by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the army, led by military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
In just over a year, the war has claimed thousands of lives, with some estimates putting the death toll as high as 150,000, according to the United States envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello.
Since the start of the war, more than seven million people have fled their homes for other parts of Sudan, adding to 2.8 million already displaced from previous conflicts in the country of 48 million inhabitants.
Fighting continues daily across the country, including in the capital, with both sides accused of war crimes including the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid.