(Wad Madani) At least ten people were killed in a paramilitary attack in the town of Jebel Aulia, south of Khartoum, on Saturday, activists said, as the death toll after six months of war in Sudan now exceeds the 9000.
According to the local resistance committee, bombs hit homes in this small town located about 50 kilometers south of the capital, killing at least ten people.
This group of volunteers is one of several Sudanese organizations that have organized pro-democracy protests.
Since the start of hostilities on April 15, pitting the army against the paramilitaries, they have been providing support to people caught in the middle of the exchanges of fire.
The committee said the paramilitaries had deployed “heavy artillery” in the city, hitting areas previously spared.
The fighting between the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who leads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is taking place mainly in Khartoum and the region of Darfur.
The NGO Acled has recorded “a toll exceeding 9,000 deaths” since the start of the war, it said Friday evening, specifying that its estimates were cautious.
The conflict has also left more than five million displaced and refugees and worsened the humanitarian and health crisis in the country, one of the poorest in the world.
In recent weeks, violence has spread further south, jeopardizing the already precarious security of more than 366,000 people who have sought refuge in Al-Jazeera state, just south of Khartoum.
According to witnesses, the RSF set up checkpoints along the road linking Khartoum to Wad Madani, 200 kilometers south of the capital which has not seen any respite since the start of the war and where millions of people get stuck.
Witnesses in the north of the city again reported “artillery fire” and street fighting on Saturday.