A Sudanese network of volunteer rescuers reported on Sunday that the military conducted an airstrike on a marketplace in Khartoum the previous day, resulting in 23 fatalities. The market, located near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, is a site where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been engaged in ongoing conflict with the military amid a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
“Twenty-three people were confirmed dead, and more than 40 others were wounded and taken to the hospital following military airstrikes on Saturday afternoon at the main market in southern Khartoum,” the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms stated in a post on Facebook.
Intense fighting has erupted since Friday around Khartoum, with the RSF controlling much of the city as the military bombards the center and southern areas from the air. Eyewitnesses reported that the military is advancing towards Khartoum from Omdurman, where clashes began on Saturday.
Since the onset of the conflict in April 2023 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the RSF has largely pushed the army out of Khartoum. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 20,000 people have died in the civil war, while some sources suggest the death toll could be as high as 150,000.
The war has also led to the world’s largest displacement crisis, with over 10 million people—about one-fifth of Sudan’s population—forced to flee their homes, according to UN figures. An August UN-backed assessment declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur, near El-Fasher.
The government aligned with the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has maintained control, while the RSF has taken over nearly all of Darfur, devastated the agricultural heartland of central Sudan, and made incursions into army-controlled southeastern regions.
