More than 20 dead and 100 wounded after fighting between the RSF and the Sudanese Army in Khartoum

July 5 (EUROPA PRESS) –

More than 20 people have died and more than a hundred have been injured this Tuesday after fighting between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Army in Khartoum, the country’s capital.

“Numerous neighborhoods of the Sudanese capital were subjected to violent ground and air attacks, which caused great human and material losses,” Sky News Arabia reported.

In addition, the RSF have published on social networks the downing of an Army MiG plane, the second they have shot down in the last 48 hours.

Both sides are trying to strengthen their military positions both in Khartoum and in Omdurman and North Khartoum; 95 percent of the country’s vital civilian and military areas are located in the capital, according to the aforementioned media.

While the RSF controls “the airport, the Presidential Palace, the Yarmouk complex for military industries, the command of the Air Defense Authority and the Central Reserve, various ministries and Police departments, and the Bank of Sudan,” as well as residential areas in which are productive and industrial institutions. On the other hand, the Army is in the power of the armored corps.

In Omdurman, the Army controls the Wadi Sayedna military base, the medical corps, the engineering corps and about 60 percent of the city. In North Khartoum they have occupied positions in both the north and the east.

Both the Army and the RSF are fighting on the seven bridges that link the three cities.

According to the aforementioned media, nine of the country’s 18 states are still outside the conflict. Other areas have been affected by clashes between the army and a faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

The SPLM faction headed by Al Hilu did not join the rebel groups that signed a historic agreement in October 2020 with the transitional authorities, then headed by Prime Minister Abdalá Hamdok, who was overthrown in 2021 after a coup d’état led by the Chief of the Army, Abdelfatá al Burhan.

The agreement was signed by various groups united in the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) coalition, after which in February 2021 there was a reshuffle to include members of these groups in the Executive. In contrast, the Al Hilu group and the Sudan Liberation Movement rebel group led by Abdeluahid el Nur (SLM-AW) declined to join, although several ceasefires had contained the fighting in the area.

The current hostilities between the Army and the RSF broke out in the context of an increase in tensions around the integration of the paramilitary group within the Armed Forces, a key part of an agreement signed in December to form a new civilian government and reactivate the transition open after the overthrow in 2019 of Omar Hasan al Bashir, damaged by the coup against Hamdok.