On Sunday, the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces exchanged accusations of bombing that targeted civilians and resulted in dozens of deaths in Omdurman and Nyala.
The Sudanese army said in a statement on Sunday evening that 13 civilians were killed in bombing carried out by the Rapid Support Forces on areas in northern Omdurman.
The army said in the statement posted on Facebook that this bombing is “a repeated behavior within the war crimes that the Rapid Support militia has committed against civilians since its rebellion against the state.”
Eyewitnesses told the Arab World News Agency (AWP) that the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces exchanged artillery shelling in the Engineers Corps area and a number of Omdurman neighborhoods yesterday.
The Rapid Support Forces are extending control over large parts of Khartoum state, while the army is seeking to cut off supply routes through bridges that connect the regions of Omdurman, Bahri and Khartoum, which constitute the wider capital on both sides of the Nile.
Fierce fighting has been taking place between the two sides since the beginning of last August in the center of the city, with the aim of controlling the Shambat Bridge linking Omdurman and Khartoum North, which is used by the Rapid Support Forces as a supply line for its forces from the west of the country to the cities of Bahri and Khartoum.
In this context, the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces on Sunday accused the army forces of killing 14 people and wounding dozens in a bombing of the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
The support forces said in a statement that the Sudanese army’s aircraft “turned the city of Nyala into a pool of blood, a killing field, and bombardment of populated areas.”
The Rapid Support Forces claimed in the statement that they were able to kill 60 and wound 140 army personnel in a “qualitative” operation inside the Corps of Engineers in Omdurman.
Sudan slid into the abyss of fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in mid-April, after weeks of tension between the two sides.