Paramilitary shells kill 10 civilians in Khartoum: activists

PORT SUDAN, Sudan (AFP): Paramilitary artillery that struck a mosque and other civilian buildings in the Sudanese capital killed 10 people on Tuesday, local activists said.

It is the latest incident in which multiple civilians have been killed in Khartoum during nearly six months of war between Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

A local resistance committee said “10 civilians were killed and 11 wounded in artillery shelling by the Rapid Support Forces in Al-Samrab neighborhood,” across the Blue Nile river to the north of central Khartoum.

The committee is one of many groups that used to organize pro-democracy protests and now provide assistance during the war.

“Some shells fell on a mosque, a health center, and citizens’ homes,” the committee said by telephone to AFP in the eastern city of Port Sudan.

On September 12 a medical source told AFP that “17 civilians were killed” by paramilitaries in northern Khartoum, where witnesses reported RSF shelling.

Those deaths came two days after at least 51 people were killed and dozens wounded in air strikes on a southern Khartoum market, according to United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk.

The worst of the violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, but North Kordofan — a crossroads between the capital and Darfur — has also seen fighting.

Nearly 7,500 people have been killed in Sudan since the conflict broke out on April 15, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

Battles have displaced almost 4.3 million people within Sudan, in addition to around 1.2 million more who have fled across borders, UN figures show.