Beirut, Lebanon – On December 9, an army airstrike hit a gas station in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, killing at least 28 people and injuring dozens.
The military said it was targeting fighters from the Rapid Support Force (RSF), a paramilitary group it has been at war with since April 2023.
Speaking weeks after the attack, Mohamed Kandasha, a doctor in the area, recalled treating people with severe burns at a nearby hospital.
Among them were men, women and children, a symbol of the indiscriminate nature of the attacks carried out by both sides in Sudan’s war.
“The RSF does not care about civilians and neither does the army,” he told Al Jazeera.
Escalation of violence
More than 26,000 people were killed between April 2023 and June 2024 in Khartoum state alone as thousands more died of conflict-related causes such as disease and starvation, according to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Since the army announced a major offensive to retake Khartoum from the RSF on September 25, the humanitarian crisis has worsened.
Recent fighting has led to extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate attacks that have killed many civilians and increased the risk to local aid workers.
The army and the RSF are former bedfellows who collaborated to sabotage a democratic transition after their former boss, President Omar al-Bashir, was ousted by popular protests in April 2019.
Four years later, the RSF and the army turned against each other in a bid for supremacy. After the first year of fighting, the RSF occupied most of Khartoum and appeared to have the upper hand in the conflict.
Then, in early October, the army retook several strategic neighborhoods and three bridges in the national capital region, which includes three cities, Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman.
As the fighting drags on, civilian casualties appear to be increasing exponentially, said Mohamad Osman, a Sudanese researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“Since October, there has been a significant increase in violence,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I think we are seeing a lot of barrel bombs being used in Khartoum, as well as drones, rockets and land missiles,” Osman added.
Barrel bombs are unguided bombs packed with explosives and shrapnel and dropped indiscriminately from helicopters and airplanes.
Throughout the war, rights groups and United Nations experts have accused both sides of committing abuses such as executing prisoners of war, committing summary killings and torturing prisoners.
The RSF has been accused of ethnically cleansing communities in the western Darfur region and systematically raping women and girls, according to Human Rights Watch, Al Jazeera’s own reporting and local monitors.
Major violations
After the army occupied Khartoum’s Halfaya neighborhood in early October, most residents were happy to be freed from RSF abuses and atrocities for a year and a half.
However, reports soon emerged claiming that dozens of men suspected of links to the RSF had been killed following the army’s advance.
“This is beyond abhorrent and goes against all human rights norms and standards,” Radhouane Nouicer, a UN expert on Sudan, said in a statement.
“The incident happened when people were still celebrating that the army had liberated them,” said Mokhtar Atif, spokesman for the emergency response room (ERR), a local relief effort that helps civilians.
“The army killed these people … because they thought they were working with the RSF,” he told Al Jazeera from France, where he is now based.
Sudanese army spokesman Nabil Abdullah denied responsibility for the incident and said the army never targets civilians, adding that sometimes RSF fighters claim to be civilians when wounded by airstrikes.
“We do not commit violations against civilians. The militia (RSF) is the one targeting civilians by killing them, displacing them and looting and looting their belongings,” Abdullah told Al Jazeera.
On December 10, Khartoum’s military-aligned governor said the RSF killed 65 people in Omdurman.
Witnesses described the attack as an act of “terrorism”.
“Every time the army advances into the RSF, the paramilitaries respond by killing civilians,” said Badawi, a local aid worker who declined to give his last name because of the sensitivity of speaking to journalists in a war zone.
Al Jazeera emailed questions to the RSF’s media office asking it to respond to reports that the RSF is deliberately targeting civilians. The press office had not responded by the time of publication.
Endangered and overwhelmed
Human rights monitors, NGOs and analysts all accuse the military of preventing aid agencies from conducting humanitarian operations in RSF-controlled regions.
They also blame the RSF for generating a hunger crisis by looting aid and food markets, raiding farmland to destroy crops, and taxing and impeding aid convoys.
“Both the SAF and the RSF, together with their foreign supporters, are responsible for what is an apparent deliberate use of starvation, which constitutes crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law,” a panel of experts said in October. UN for Sudan.
Civilians in RSF areas rely almost entirely on ERRs, a network of community aid groups that have led the humanitarian response since the start of the war, local and international aid workers told Al Jazeera.
On Thursday, ERRs partnered with the World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF to finally bring 28 trucks of relief aid.
It was the first time WFP had sent aid to RSF areas in Khartoum from areas controlled by the army, said Hajooj Kuka, spokesman for Khartoum’s ERRs.
But both sides in the war still target aid workers.
Civilians in Khartoum North are particularly vulnerable now that the area is an epicenter of conflict, said Atif, the ERR spokesman.
He told Al Jazeera that of the 69 local aid workers killed in the war by the army and the RSF, at least 30 were from Khartoum North.
In addition, aid workers are trying to evacuate civilians in Khartoum North after an RSF commander ordered several neighborhoods – and thousands of people – to leave this month, Atif said.
Roads from Khartoum North are dangerous due to army airstrikes and the presence of RSF fighters, who human rights groups accuse of looting and indiscriminate killing and indiscriminate rape of women and girls.
“There is so much random army fire on the streets and the RSF there … it means anything can happen to us,” said an aid worker in Khartoum North, whose identity Al Jazeera is not releasing to protect the person.
Safe exit?
The only safe route from Khartoum North is to Sharq el-Nile (East Nile), where aid workers are already overwhelmed absorbing thousands of people fleeing Gezira state, where the RSF has carried out killings almost daily since its capture a year. before, local activists and witnesses said.
The ERR has only been able to evacuate about 200 people from Khartoum North to Sharq el-Nile mainly due to lack of resources, Atif said, pleading for NGOs or UN agencies to support the Khartoum ERR North intervening to protect civilians.
Conducting evacuations without the military’s approval could be dangerous and lead to limited access for aid groups, Osman said.
Last year, the army admitted to attacking a humanitarian convoy belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was to rescue about 100 people from an active conflict zone in Khartoum, according to the Sudan Tribune.
The attack killed two aid workers and injured seven people.
In Sharq el-Nile, the RSF arrested several ERR volunteers without an identifiable reason, Atif said.
He speculated that some RSF fighters were looking to collect a quick bounty and intimidate the ERR.
“These are just civilians helping their communities. There is no reason for them to be in danger,” Atif told Al Jazeera.
“The opposite should happen. They should be given access, money and permission (to do their job).
