Sudan clashes intensify amid heavy airstrikes, casualties
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The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) claim to have shot down a Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) fighter plane.
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Smoke rising over Khartoum, Sudan, Wednesday, June 7, 2023 (AP)
A citizens' group said airstrikes killed or injured more than two dozen civilians in Khartoum on Saturday, as medics reported hundreds of injured leaving Sudan's western Darfur area amid the growing violence of a two-month conflict.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) claimed to have shot down a fighter plane from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). A military source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told AFP that a plane did go down but blamed it on a "malfunction".
The SAF, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been engaged in a power struggle with the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, since April 15.
Witnesses say airstrikes have intensified in the capital over the past few days.
Read next: Sudanese Doctors' Union says 17 killed in shelling south of Khartoum
Warplanes again struck residential districts of Khartoum on Saturday, killing "17 civilians, including five children," according to a citizens' support committee.
Residents have previously reported airstrikes in the city's southern Yarmouk area, which houses a weapons factory and an arms depot complex over which the RSF claimed "full control" in early June. Moreover, the citizen's committee said 11 other civilians were injured, but AFP was unable to independently confirm the data.
In a video posted on the army's Facebook page on Friday, deputy army leader Yasser Atta cautioned citizens to avoid houses where RSF are stationed because the army "will attack them at any time."
Increase in death toll
The death toll in the country has surpassed 2,000 since the fighting began, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
Hundreds of kilometers (miles) west of Khartoum, up to 1,100 people have been killed in the West Darfur state capital El Geneina alone, according to the US State Department.
Medics said Saturday that they were overwhelmed by the hundreds of injured fleeing Sudan's Darfur area, which has become a growing source of concern around the world.
Read next: Humanitarian conditions in Sudan worsen as conflict continues
"We are overwhelmed in the operating theatre. We urgently need more beds and more staff," said Seybou Diarra, a physician and project coordinator in Adre, Chad, for the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity.
Over a three-day period, more than 600 patients, the majority of whom had gunshot wounds, arrived at the facility, with more than half of them arriving on Friday.
MSF's head of emergency programs, Claire Nicolet, cited "reports of intensifying and large-scale attacks this week". That said, at least 149,000 people have fled from Darfur into Chad, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
'Our life has changed'
The fighting has driven 2.2 million people from their homes, including 528,000 who have fled to neighboring countries, as per the International Organization for Migration.
"In our worst expectations, we didn't see this war dragging on for this long," said Mohamad Al-Hassan Othman, one of more than a million civilians who have escaped heavy clashes in the capital Khartoum.
Everything in "our life has changed," he said as quoted by AFP. "We don't know whether we'll be back home or need to start a new life."
In the long-troubled West Darfur state, Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar was killed just a few hours after he made remarks critical of the paramilitaries in a telephone interview with a Saudi TV channel.
The United Nations said "compelling eyewitness accounts attribute this act to Arab militias and the RSF," while the Darfur Lawyers Association denounced the act of "barbarism, brutality and cruelty."
