40 killed in paramilitary shelling on Sudan market: medical source

Sudanese paramilitary shelling of a market in Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, killed 40 people on Saturday, a medical source told AFP.

Requesting anonymity for their safety, the source at Al-Nao Hospital said the wounded were "still being brought to the hospital" following the attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Since April 2023, the paramilitary RSF has been at war with the regular army, in a brutal conflict that has killed tens of thousands and uprooted over 12 million.

"The shells fell in the middle of the vegetable market, that's why the victims and the wounded are so many," one survivor told AFP.

A volunteer at Al-Nao Hospital told AFP they were in dire need of "shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded".

The hospital is one of the last medical facilities operating in the area, and has been repeatedly attacked.

After months of apparent stalemate in the capital, the army this month managed to reclaim key bases including its Khartoum headquarters, pushing the RSF out of many of its strongholds and increasingly into the city's outskirts.

Eyewitnesses to the attack on Saturday -- only the latest to target civilians in markets -- told AFP the artillery shelling came from western Omdurman, where the RSF remains in control, and was supported by drones.

One resident further south in Omdurman reported that the RSF was firing on multiple streets at once, saying "rockets and artillery shells are falling".

 Counter-offensive 
 

Saturday's attack comes a day after RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo vowed to retake the capital from the army.

"We expelled them (from Khartoum) before, and we will expel them again," he told troops in a rare video address.

Soon after the first shelling began nearly 22 months ago, Sudan's capital was turned into a shell of its former self.

Of the tens of thousands dead across the country, 26,000 people were killed in the capital alone between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Entire neighbourhoods have been emptied out and taken over by fighters as at least 3.6 million people fled the capital, according to United Nations figures.

Those unable or unwilling to leave have reported shelling regularly hitting homes and residential areas, while sieges on parts of the capital have threatened millions with starvation.

At least 106,000 people are estimated to be suffering from famine in Khartoum, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, with a further 3.2 million experiencing crisis levels of hunger.

Across the northeast African country, famine has been declared in five areas -- mainly in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur -- and is expected to take hold of five more by May.

Before leaving office, the administration of former US president Joe Biden sanctioned Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals and using food deprivation as a weapon of war.

That designation came about one week after Washington sanctioned the RSF's Daglo for his role in "gross violations of human rights" in Sudan's Darfur region, where the RSF dominates.

The United States said Daglo's forces had "committed genocide".