In the ongoing civil conflict with the army, shelling by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the city of Omdurman resulted in 65 fatalities and hundreds more injuries.
According to the state’s army-aligned governor, paramilitary shelling on the Sudanese city of Omdurman, which is a part of larger Khartoum, killed at least 65 people and injured hundreds more.
“A single shell on a passenger bus “killed everyone on board and transformed 22 individuals into body parts,” Khartoum Governor Ahmed Othman Hamza stated in a statement on Tuesday.
He referred to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who have been at war with the army since April 2023, as the “terrorist militia” behind the attack, calling it a “massacre.”
In the conflict with his former deputy RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, Sudan’s administration, including state authorities, continue to support army chief Abdel Fattah al Burhan.
The Red Sea city of Port Sudan, which serves as the temporary seat of government and is also home to the UN and other assistance organizations, is where they have moved from the war-torn capital.
According to a medical source at Al-Nao Hospital in Omdurman, one of the last hospitals in the region to take in patients, the hospital took in 15 of the people murdered in the bus attack, and seven more passed away there later.
They said, asking anonymity out of concern for retaliation, that it had also “received 45 injured from different areas” of Omdurman.
Targeting health professionals and civilians
Some of the heaviest fights between the army and the RSF this year took place in the capital on Tuesday.
“We haven’t seen bombing this intense in six months,” an eyewitness to the shelling of the passenger bus told AFP, asking anonymity.
Shelling against RSF positions in western Omdurman and across the river in Bahri was reported by another eyewitness from the Wadi Seidna army post in northern Omdurman.
Both the RSF and the army have been charged with randomly bombarding residential areas and targeting civilians, including medical personnel.
The RSF controls Khartoum North (Bahri), which is located directly over the Nile River, while the army controls the majority of Omdurman.
Residents have been reporting shelling on both sides of the river for a long time, with homes and civilians frequently being hit by bombs and shrapnel.
Tens of thousands have died and nearly 11 million have been displaced as a result of the conflict, which the UN has dubbed the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent memory.
According to the UN, up to 80% of medical facilities in impacted areas are either closed or hardly working, severely crippling the already precarious healthcare sector.
