Five kids among 17 killed in airstrikes in Sudan's capital

At least seventeen people, including five children, have been killed in an airstrike in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, as fighting intensifies between rival generals seeking control of the country.

Warplanes struck residential districts of the capital on Saturday, killing 17 civilians, including five children, health officials said.

The airstrike, the deadliest in the clashes in urban areas of Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan, came a day after a top army general threatened to step up attacks against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Over the past two months, the Sudanese army and the RSF have been locked in urban combat which has so far killed at least 1,800 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project's (ACLED) latest figures from last month

The fighting now spreads to the provinces, particularly to the cities of the western region of Darfur.

On Thursday, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths described the conditions in Darfur as particularly dire.

He said that babies were dying in hospitals, children and mothers suffering from severe malnutrition, camps for displaced persons burned down and sexual violence was on the rise.

He also highlighted reports of ethnic killings in West Darfur’s capital El Geneina and stressed that the province was rapidly spiraling into a “humanitarian calamity." 

“The world cannot allow this to happen, “not again," Mr. Griffiths said referring to the ethnic tensions that stoked deadly conflict there 20 years ago.

Medics also warned about the increasing number of wounded people who are fleeing the Darfur region.

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity said the organization said in a statement on Friday that more than 600 patients, most with gunshot wounds, arrived at the facility over a three-day period in Chad.

“We urgently need more beds and more staff," said Seybou Diarra, a physician and project coordinator for the MSF.

"As violence rages in West Darfur, wounded people are coming in waves" to the hospital in Adre, just over the border about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of El Geneina, Diarra added.

MSF's head of emergency programs Claire Nicolet also cited "reports of intensifying and large-scale attacks this week.”

SS