Explosions echoed Friday near Khartoum, Sudan’s army-controlled capital, witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) – a day after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said they had agreed to a humanitarian truce.
The renewed violence comes less than two weeks after the RSF captured El-Fasher, the army’s last major stronghold in western Darfur, signaling a possible shift in the paramilitary group’s offensive toward Khartoum and the oil-rich Kordofan region.
Khartoum, under military control since early this year, had enjoyed a brief period of relative calm. But the RSF – locked in a brutal war with Sudan’s army since April 2023 – has continued launching attacks across several regions, targeting both military and civilian sites despite repeated calls for a cease-fire.
A resident in Omdurman, part of the greater Khartoum area, told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal that they were awakened “around 2:00 a.m. (12:00 a.m. GMT) by the sound of explosions near the Wadi Sayidna military base.”
Another resident said they “heard a drone overhead around 4:00 a.m. before an explosion struck near a power station, causing an outage in the area.”
In army-controlled Atbara, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Khartoum, a resident said several drones “appeared over the city shortly after 3:00 a.m. Friday.”
“Anti-aircraft defenses shot them down, but I saw fires breaking out and heard explosions in the east of the city,” the resident said, also speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Another Atbara resident told AFP, “I saw 10 drones over the city, and the anti-aircraft defenses were shooting them down one by one, but at the same time, I saw fires in the east of the city.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties, and neither the army nor the RSF had commented on the attacks as of late Friday.
Meanwhile, the Sudan Doctors Union said the RSF shelled a hospital in the besieged city of Dilling in South Kordofan on Thursday morning, injuring several people, some critically.
The shelling “destroyed the hospital’s radiology and medical imaging department,” crippling one of the region’s vital health facilities, the union said.
Dilling has been under RSF siege since June 2023.
