Air strikes, tank fire rock Sudan’s capital, Turkish evacuation plane hit

Strikes from the air, tanks and artillery shook Sudan’s capital of Khartoum on Friday and a heavy bombardment pounded the adjacent city of Bahri, witnesses said, even though the army and a rival paramilitary force agreed to extend a truce by 72 hours.

Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have fled for their lives in a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted on April 15 and disabled an internationally backed transition to democracy.

In persisting ceasefire violations that the United States called worrying, heavy gunfire and detonations rattled residential neighbourhoods of the capital region where fighting has been concentrated over the past week.

Thick smoke was rising above two areas of Bahri, a Reuters reporter said.

“The situation this morning is very scary. We hear the sounds of planes and explosions. We don’t know when this hell will end,” said Bahri resident Mahasin al-Awad, 65.

“We’re in a constant state of fear for ourselves and our children.”

Sudan’s army has been directing air strikes with fighter jets or drones on RSF forces spread out in neighbourhoods across the capital.

In a statement on Friday, the RSF accused the army of violating a U.S.- and Saudi-brokered truce pact by carrying out air strikes on its bases in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city across the Nile, and Mount Awliya.

The army accused the RSF of shooting at a Turkish evacuation plane as it was landing at Wadi Seyidna airport outside Khartoum on Friday, saying a crew member was wounded and the aircraft’s fuel supply damaged. The plane managed to land safely and was being repaired, the army said in a statement said.

The RSF said the army’s air strikes were impeding evacuation efforts by foreign diplomatic missions.

Fighting has also spread to the Darfur region, where conflict has simmered since civil war erupted two decades ago, and threatens to spread instability across a volatile swathe of Africa between the Sahel and the Red Sea.

At least 512 people have been killed and close to 4,200 wounded by the fighting since April 15, and a humanitarian crisis has mushroomed. Food distribution has been severely limited in Africa’s third-largest country, where a third of its 46 million people were already reliant on relief aid.

The top U.N. aid official in Sudan, Abdou Dieng, said on Thursday that “very little can be done” in terms of humanitarian assistance.