Activists say over 70 dead in two days of Sudan fighting

Sudanese volunteer rescuers reported four children were among 20 people killed in an army air strike in the capital Khartoum Tuesday, adding to dozens killed in Al-Jazira state since Sunday.

The strike wounded 27 people, including women and children, and left bodies "charred", according to the emergency response room (ERR) in Khartoum's south belt, one of hundreds of youth-led volunteer groups.

In Al-Jazira state just south of Khartoum, fierce clashes ignited Sunday after a paramilitary commander defected to the army, killing more than 50 people, according to activists.

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An army air strike on a mosque in the state capital of Wad Madani on Sunday killed 31 people, the local resistance committee said in a statement to AFP on Tuesday.

ERRs and resistance committees have been coordinating life-saving aid for civilians caught in the crossfire since war broke out between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April 2023.

Wad Madani's committee accused the army of using "barrel bombs", adding that over half of those killed in the mosque strike remained unidentified as rescuers combed through the remains of "dozens of charred and mutilated bodies".

In the state's war-ravaged east, activists said at least 20 people have been killed in paramilitary attacks since Sunday.

Across the country, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and created the world's largest displacement and humanitarian crises.

The rival armed forces are locked in combat for Al-Jazira state, Sudan's pre-war breadbasket, which has been under paramilitary control since late last year.

'Vengeful' attacks

On Sunday, the army announced that the RSF's Al-Jazira commander Abu Aqla Kaykal had abandoned the paramilitary force, bringing "a large number of his forces" with him, in what it said was the first high-profile defection to its side.

A spokesman for army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said Kaykal and others who defect would receive "amnesty", as war-weary civilians braced for retaliatory attacks.

Mere hours after the army took control of Tamboul -- 75 kilometres (45 miles) north of Wad Madani -- witnesses reported RSF troops were back "rampaging" through the city.

They said paramilitary fighters "shot randomly in the air" and forced civilians to carry away looted goods.

By Tuesday, the RSF "repelled an army attempt" to regain the town of Tamboul, a paramilitary source told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians, indiscriminately shelling residential areas and blocking or looting aid.

The RSF and its allied militias have also been accused of ethnic killings and of using rape as a weapon of war.

In the town of Rufaa, just 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the state capital, the local resistance committee said on Tuesday that paramilitary attacks on a series of villages in eastern Al-Jazira resulted in at least 20 deaths.

The activists accused the paramilitaries of carrying out "vengeful operations against defenceless" civilians, in response to Kaykal's defection.

According to the volunteer group Central Observatory for Human Rights, at least seven towns and villages have been hit by "vengeful attacks that pay no heed to the rights of civilians during wartime".