Smoke billows after drone strikes by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) targeted the northern port in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, Sudan, Tuesday, May 6, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry accused paramilitaries of causing at least 120 civilian deaths. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry accused paramilitaries late Thursday (November 7, 2024) of causing at least 120 civilian deaths over two days in Al-Jazira State, Sudan’s pre-war breadbasket where fighting has raged since last month.

Explained | The status of the civil war in Sudan

“The Janjaweed militia (paramilitaries) committed a new massacre in the town of Hilaliya in Al-Jazira state over the past two days, resulting in 120 martyrs so far, killed either by gunfire or due to food poisoning and lack of medical care affecting hundreds of civilians,” the Ministry said in a statement.

The army-backed government routinely refers to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) it has been fighting since April 2023 as Janjaweed, an infamous militia recruited by the then government in Khartoum to suppress an ethnic minority rebellion in the western region of Darfur two decades ago.

The Sudan’s Doctors Union said that “after looting and stealing all the possessions of residents in Hilaliya, the militia detained people inside mosques, only allowing them to leave after paying large sums, which are impossible to afford after the extensive looting and theft”.

Witnesses say that the RSF has imposed a two-week siege on the town, preventing residents from leaving.

The RSF recently intensified attacks against civilians in Al-Jazira state after one of its key commanders defected to the regular army.

Last month, at least 200 people were killed in the state, which is under army control, according to an AFP tally based on medical and activist sources. The United Nations said that 135,000 civilians were displaced.

The conflict in Sudan pits the regular army, under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

It has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, 3.1 million of them as refugees abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Flames gripped the Sudanese capital Sunday and paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters for the second day in a row, witnesses reported, as fighting raged into its six month.

“Clashes are now happening around the army headquarters with various types of weapons,” witnesses told AFP Sunday from Khartoum, while others reported fighting in the city of El-Obeid, 350 kilometres (about 220 miles) south.

Battles between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified Saturday, resulting in several key buildings in central Khartoum being set alight.

In social media posts verified by AFP, users shared footage of flames devouring landmarks of the Khartoum skyline, including the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company Tower – a conical building with glass facades that had become an emblem of the city.

Users mourned Khartoum, a shell of its former self, in posts that showed buildings – their windows blown out and their walls charred or pockmarked with bullets – continuing to smoulder.

Since war erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, nearly 7,500 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

It has displaced more than five million people, including 2.8 million who have fled the relentless air strikes, artillery fire and street battles in Khartoum’s densely-populated neighbourhoods.

The millions that remain in the city woke up Sunday to find clouds of smoke obscuring the skyline, as the sound of bombs and gunfire burst through the capital.

“We can hear huge bangs,” witnesses told AFP Sunday from the Mayo district of southern Khartoum, where the army targeted RSF bases with artillery fire.

At least 51 people were killed last week in air strikes on a market in Mayo, according to the United Nations, in one of the deadliest single attacks of the war.

The worst of the violence has been concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, where ethnically-motivated attacks by the RSF and allied militias have triggered renewed investigations by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes.

There has also been fighting in the southern Kordofan region, where witnesses again reported on Sunday artillery fire exchanged between the army and the RSF in the city of El-Obeid.