Airstrike in Sudan claims dozens of lives – AFP

According to witnesses, Nyala’s two markets and several other areas were bombarded on Wednesday.

At least 40 civilians were killed in airstrikes on different parts of the South Darfur state capital, Nyala, on Wednesday, according to an AFP report citing a medical source and eyewitnesses.

“Forty civilians have been killed in an airstrike that hit two markets and a number of the city’s neighbourhoods,” the unnamed medical staff informed the French media.

Witnesses in the region had earlier heard reports of airstrikes on two markets that had killed civilians.

Since combat broke out on April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Darfur region has allegedly seen some of the worst carnage.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project reports that over the five months of fierce warfare, nearly 7,500 people have died.

After allegations of 17 civilian casualties in Omdurman, Sudan’s second-largest city, which witnesses attributed to RSF shelling, the latest strike occurred the following day.

However, the RSF stated in a statement on Wednesday that the Sudanese army, or “extremist Burhan militia,” was responsible for the attacks on Monday and Tuesday.

Additionally, the RSF said that this week’s SAF bombings of “residential areas and markets in Khartoum, East Nile, Bahri, and Omdurman” had “resulted in the killing of more than 104 people and the injury of hundreds.”

The Sudanese paramilitary group revealed a plan last month for putting an end to the bloody conflict and creating a “new Sudan.” General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander of the opposing army, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, have both stated a desire to reach a lasting ceasefire.

The RSF plan was rejected by the army head, who claimed he would not “make deals with traitors.”

General Al-Burhan was scheduled to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Sudanese government. They would discuss “bilateral relations and ways to strengthen them.”

The UN estimates that more than four million people have fled the Sahel region since the conflict started in mid-April, and the Turkish leader has earlier volunteered to host peace talks there.