Sudan’s war is raging as central Khartoum is in flames

Witnesses claimed that as conflict entered its sixth month, flames engulfed the capital of Sudan on Sunday and paramilitary forces twice attacked the army’s command centre.

Witnesses in Khartoum told AFP that “clashes are now happening around the army headquarters with various types of weapons,” while other witnesses in the 350 km (220 mi) south of Khartoum observed violence.

A number of significant buildings in central Khartoum were set on fire Saturday as fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces grew more intense.

The Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower, a conical structure with glass facades that had become a hallmark of the city, was among the landmarks of the Khartoum skyline that users posted in social media posts that AFP confirmed.

In messages that featured images of burning houses with windows blown out and gunshot holes in their walls, users lamented Khartoum, a shell of its former self.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has estimated that almost 7,500 people have died since the conflict between army head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, started on 15 April.

More than five million people have been displaced by it, including 2.8 million who escaped the constant airstrikes, artillery fire, and street fights in Khartoum’s densely populated neighbourhoods.

The millions of people still living in the city awoke on Sunday to smoke clouds covering the skyline and the sound of gunfire and bombs exploding throughout the capital.

Witnesses from the Mayo district of southern Khartoum told AFP on Sunday that they could hear “huge bangs” when the army fired artillery against RSF camps there.

According to the United Nations, one of the bloodiest single attacks of the war occurred last week when airstrikes were launched against a market in Mayo, killing at least 51 people.

The majority of the violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western part of Darfur, where racially motivated attacks by the RSF and its allies’ militias have sparked new inquiries into potential war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Additionally, there have been clashes in the southern Kordofan region, where on Sunday, El-Obeid saw artillery fire exchanged between the army and the RSF, according to new reports from witnesses.