Sudan military’s strike on market in capital kills at least 23: Rescuers

At least 23 people have been killed in an airstrike by the Sudanese military on a market in Khartoum, according to a local network of volunteer rescuers.

The Southern Belt emergency room announced on Sunday in a Facebook post that more than 40 people were reportedly hurt.

“Some of them are in critical condition. This is the result of the military air bombing of Khartoum central market yesterday]Saturday] afternoon”, it said, quoting witnesses at the market area.

In a civil war that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military close to one of the main camps in the country’s capital.

Since Friday, fierce fighting has erupted in Khartoum, where the RSF has dominated the majority of the airstrikes. The military has been launching missiles into the city’s center and south.

The military is advancing towards Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes erupted on Saturday, witnesses said.

No end in sight

The&nbsp, ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF has raged since April 2023, killing 20, 000 people and displacing more than 10 million, including 2.4 million who have fled to other countries, according to estimates by the United Nations.

Port Sudan, on the coast of the Red Sea, is the headquarters of the army-reliable government.

The RSF, meanwhile, has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.

More than 25 million people in Sudan, or roughly half of its population, are in desperate need of food and healthcare as a result of the conflict.

In Darfur, close to the city of el-Fasher, a UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp.