Sudan’s Khartoum engulfed in flames as war rages across the country
- Social media footage shows the city’s buildings burning and smouldering with windows blown out and walls charred or pockmarked with bullets
- Since war erupted in Sudan on April 15, nearly 7,500 people have been killed and more than 5 million displaced, including 2.8 million who have fled
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Flames gripped the Sudanese capital on 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 in Khartoum said, while others reported fighting in the city of El-Obeid, 350km (220 miles) south.
Battles between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified on Saturday, resulting in several key buildings in central Khartoum being set alight.
In verified social media posts 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.
Sudan civil war would be ‘nightmare’ for world, but fighting continues
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.
The war 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 on 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,” said witnesses in the Mayo district of southern Khartoum, where the army targeted RSF bases with artillery fire.
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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 on Sunday again reported artillery fire between the army and the RSF in the city of El-Obeid.
