Air raids in several areas of South Darfur’s state capital, Nyala, in war-torn Sudan on Wednesday killed at least 40 civilians, according to an AFP report, citing a medical source and witnesses.
“Forty civilians have been killed in an airstrike that hit two markets and a number of the city’s neighborhoods,” the anonymous medical personnel told the French outlet.
Witnesses in the area had previously reported airstrikes on two markets, which resulted in civilian casualties.
The Darfur region has reportedly witnessed some of the worst violence since fighting erupted on April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, nearly 7,500 people have been killed in the five months of intense fighting.
The latest attack came a day after reports of 17 civilian deaths in Omdurman, Sudan’s second-most populous city, which witnesses blamed on RSF shelling.
However, in a statement on Wednesday, the RSF claimed attacks on Monday and Tuesday were carried out by the “extremist Burhan militia,” referring to the Sudanese army.
The RSF also alleged that the bombing of “residential areas and markets in Khartoum, East Nile, Bahri, and Omdurman” by the SAF this week had “resulted in the killing of more than 104 people and the injury of hundreds.”
Last month, the Sudanese paramilitary group unveiled a strategy for ending the deadly conflict and building a ‘new Sudan’. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, has expressed a desire to reach a long-term ceasefire agreement with his rival army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
The army chief has rejected the RSF proposal, saying he will not “make deals with traitors.”
The Sudanese government announced on Wednesday that General Al-Burhan was on his way to Türkiye to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about “bilateral relations and ways to strengthen them.”
The Turkish leader had previously offered to host peace talks in the Sahel region, where the UN estimates that more than four million people have fled since the conflict began in mid-April.