Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which in October seized the army’s last holdout position in Darfur.
The RSF has since pushed west to the Chadian border and east through the vast Kordofan region, where a drone strike on the North Kordofan capital of El-Obeid on Sunday caused a blackout in the key army-controlled city.
A medical source reported Sunday that 51 people were killed the day before in drone strikes attributed to the army on the North Darfur town of Al-Zuruq, 180 kilometres (112 miles) north of the RSF-overrun state capital El-Fashir.
The strike hit a market and civilian areas, the source said.
Al-Zuruq, under RSF control, is home to family members of RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the former deputy of his now rival, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
“Two of the Daglo family were killed, Moussa Saleh Daglo and Awad Moussa Saleh Daglo,” an eyewitness to the burial told AFP.
Both the RSF and the army are accused of targeting civilian areas, in what the UN has called a “war of atrocities”.
RSF fighters advancing westward towards the border with Chad last week killed another 63 people in and around the town of Kernoi, a medical source in the local hospital told AFP Sunday.
“Until Friday, 63 were killed and 57 injured… in attacks launched by the RSF around Kernoi,” they said, speaking on condition of anonymity for their safety.
Local sources told AFP that 17 people were still missing.
The entire Darfur region is largely inaccessible to reporters and is under a years-long communications blackout, forcing local volunteers and medics to use satellite internet to get news to the world.