(Port Sudan) Twenty-two people were killed and 17 others injured on Saturday by artillery fire on the town of el-Facher in the Darfur region, more than fifteen months after the start of the war in Sudan, a medical source reported.
“The bombings on the livestock market and the Redayef district left 22 dead and 17 wounded,” a medical source at the Saudi hospital in el-Facher told AFP on condition of anonymity, while witnesses told AFP of “artillery and shelling” by the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army in Sudan.
“Some houses were destroyed by falling shells,” according to the same sources.
Since the beginning of May, the fighting has been particularly violent in this capital of the state of North Darfur, the only large city in this region of western Sudan to escape the control of the paramilitaries.
In order to capture the city, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) besieged it, trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians.
El-Facher has enjoyed two weeks of relative calm after paramilitaries bombed a market in the town in early July, killing 15 civilians and wounding 29 others.
According to a report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) dated June 24, the violence in el-Facher caused the death of 260 people.
The war that has pitted the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, against the FSR of his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, since April 2023, has left tens of thousands dead, with some estimates putting the number at 150,000, according to the US envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello.
It has forced more than eleven million people to flee within the country and abroad, devastating infrastructure and pushing Sudan to the brink of famine.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian aid.