Airstrike kills 17 Sudanese civilians in Khartoum

By Adel Abdel-Rahim

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AA) – At least 17 civilians were killed, including five children, in an airstrike in south Khartoum, according to Sudanese activists on Sunday.

The attack targeted a residential neighborhood in Mayo suburb in the Sudanese capital late Saturday, the so-called South Belt Emergency Room said in a statement.

Eleven people were also injured in the attack.

It was not yet clear the party behind the attack, but the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group said its fighters had shot down an aircraft that attacked residential neighborhoods in south Khartoum.

There was no comment yet from the Sudanese army on the RSF claim.

On Saturday, the army and the RSF agreed to a 3-day cease-fire starting Sunday.

Sudan has been ravaged by fighting between the army and the RSF since April. Nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed and thousands injured in the violence, according to local medics.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that more than 2.2 million people have been displaced by the current conflict.

A disagreement had been fomenting in recent months between the army and the RSF about the integration of the paramilitary group into the armed forces -- a key condition of Sudan's transition agreement with political groups.

Sudan has been without a functioning government since the fall of 2021, when the military dismissed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government and declared a state of emergency, in a move decried by political forces as a "coup."

The transitional period, which started in August 2019 after the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir, had been scheduled to end with elections in early 2024.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar