Fifteen months after Sudan’s war began, 22 people were killed and 17 others injured when artillery fire was launched on the town of El Fasher in the vast Darfur region on Saturday.
“The bombings on the zoo and the Redagef district claimed the lives of 22 people and injured 17 others,” a source at the Saudi hospital in Faser told AFP. Eyewitnesses spoke of “gunfire and mortar shelling” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is fighting the Sudanese armed forces.
Since early May, fierce fighting has raged in the city, the capital of North Darfur state and the only urban center in western Sudan that has not fallen to paramilitaries. Fasher has been relatively calm since early July, when paramilitaries bombed a market in the city, killing 15 civilians and wounding 29 others.
According to an estimate by the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, at least 260 people have been killed in the fighting in El Fasser as of June 24.
War broke out on April 15, 2023, between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and paramilitaries led by the then number two in the military junta in Sudan, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The conflict has cost tens of thousands of lives – some estimates put the death toll at 150,000, according to US special envoy for Sudan Tom Periello.
The hostilities also forced more than 11 million people to become internally displaced and refugees, caused widespread damage to infrastructure and pushed Sudan to the brink of famine.
Both sides in the conflict have been accused of war crimes.
Source: AMPE-AFP