At least 30 people were killed on Tuesday in a market in Omdurman, Sudan, with artillery shells that medical sources say were fired from a military base controlled by government forces, which have been fighting a civil war against a Sudanese paramilitary group for months (Omdurman it is part of the metropolitan area of Khartoum, the capital). A local trader told al Guardian that «the market has become very dangerous, especially in the afternoon. You can be hit by a bomb and die.’
The civil war in Sudan began on April 15, at the height of a series of tensions between President Fattah al Burhan, who leads the regular army, and Vice President Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two led a military junta, the Sovereign Council, which had ruled the country since October 2021 after seizing power in a coup. About half of the inhabitants of the cities of Khartoum and Omdurman have fled their homes since the clashes began.
This week was one of the most violent since the beginning of the war, with a very high number of civilians killed: last Saturday alone an aerial bombardment, which the RSF claimed was carried out by government forces, killed 38 people in Omdurman. Another shelling killed nine people in a Khartoum mosque on Sunday. The fighting was also particularly violent in the regions of Kordofan and Darfur, in the central and eastern part of the country.
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