At least 33 civilians were killed in Khartoum on Thursday, including 23 in air force bombings of a neighborhood in the southeast of the capital, a committee of pro-lawyers reported overnight Thursday into Friday. -Democracy.
• Also read: War in Sudan: A “catastrophe” awaits 24 million children.
The committee announced Thursday that 10 civilians were killed by artillery fire on the southern outskirts of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, which has been torn since April 15 by a war for power between two rival generals in that African country.
The conflict, pitting the army under the command of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane against the paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo's Rapid Support Forces (FSR), has left more than 12,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Site and Survey Project Event data management of armed conflicts (Acled).
The war has also displaced more than seven million people, according to the United Nations. Among them are “3.5 million children,” Mandeep O'Brien, director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Sudan, told AFP.
“The conflict in Sudan seriously jeopardizes the health and well-being of 24 million children and therefore the future of the country, with serious consequences for the entire region,” Ms O'Brien added in an interview with AFP.
On Thursday in Khartoum, “23 civilians were killed and many seriously injured in an air strike on the Soba district (…),” said the legal committee.
“Impunity”
In Khartoum's southern belt, “ten civilians were killed in artillery firefights in a residential neighborhood and the local market,” the local “Resistance Committee,” a neighborhood organization that manages mutual aid between residents, reported Thursday.
Diplomatic efforts to negotiate peace in Sudan, particularly by the USA, Saudi Arabia and more recently the East African regional bloc Igad, have so far failed.
In a report on Thursday, the NGO Human Rights Watch denounced the “massive violations” of civil rights in Sudan by the two rival generals and castigated the “impunity” that has led to “repeated cycles of violence” in that country for two decades.
Before their confrontation, Generals Burhane and Daglo had joined forces to stage a coup in October 2021 and oust civil society representatives from power, ending a two-year democratic transition.
Having been unable to gain an advantage since the start of the war, both camps hesitate, but neither has any intention of making any concessions at the negotiating table.
On the ground, however, paramilitaries appear to have been taking control of new areas across the country for months against weak resistance from the army.