Drone attack kills 30 in Sudan’s capital as rival troops battle, activists say

A drone attack Sunday on an open market south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, killed at least 30 people, activists and medical workers said, as the military and a powerful paramilitary group battle for control of the country.

At least three dozen others were injured in the attack in Khartoum’s May neighbourhood, according to an activist group known as the Resistance Committees and two health care workers at the Bashair University Hospital, where the casualties were treated.

The activist group posted footage on social media showing bodies wrapped in white sheets in an open yard at the hospital.

It was not immediately clear which side was behind Sunday’s attack. Indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes by both factions aren't uncommon in Sudan's war, which has reduced the Greater Khartoum area to a battleground.

Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-April, when tensions between the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, burst into open fighting.

The clashes have since spread to several parts of the country. In the Greater Khartoum area, which includes the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, RSF troops have commandeered civilian homes and turned them into operational bases. The military responded by bombing residential areas, rights groups and activists say.

In the western Darfur region — the scene of a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s — the conflict has morphed into ethnic violence, with the RSF and allied Arab militias attacking ethnic African groups, according to rights groups and the United Nations.

The conflict has killed more than 4,000 people, according to August figures from the United Nations. However, the real toll is almost certainly much higher, doctors and activists say.

The number of the internally displaced has nearly doubled since mid-April to reach at least 7.1 million people, according to the UN refugee agency. Another 1.1 million are refugees in neighboring countries.

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