KHARTOUM  –  The Sudanese military has carried out an air strike on a marketplace in the capital Khartoum, killing at least 23 people, says a local network of volunteer rescuers.

More than 40 others were said to be wounded, the Southern Belt emergency room said on Sunday in a post on Facebook.

“Some of them are in critical condition. This is the result of the military air bombing of Khartoum central market yesterday [Saturday] afternoon,” it said, quoting witnesses at the market area.

The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been fighting the military, in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Fierce fighting has raged since Friday around Khartoum, much of which is controlled by the RSF, with the military hitting the centre and south of the city from the air.

The military is advancing towards Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes erupted last Saturday, witnesses said.

The ongoing war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF has raged since April 2023, killing 20,000 people and displacing more than 10 million, including 2.4 million who have fled to other countries, according to estimates by the United Nations.

The government loyal to the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has retained control.

The RSF, meanwhile, has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.

The conflict has left more than 25 million people – about half the population of Sudan – in desperate need of food and healthcare.

A UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur near the city of el-Fasher.

The international community has been floundering in its efforts to bring an end to the devastating conflict, which has been overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

Photo: Plumes of smoke rise during clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army in Khartoum. (Reuters)