Local activists in central Sudan say more than 50 people have been killed since violence began in Al-Jazira state on Sunday when a paramilitary commander defected to the military.
A military air strike on a mosque in Wad Madani, the state capital, killed 31 people, according to a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday by the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating help across the war-torn country.
They accused the army of deploying “barrel bombs,” and claimed that more than half of the victims went unidentified while rescuers sifted through the remains of “dozens of charred and mutilated bodies.”
Activists in the state’s war-torn east reported at least 20 deaths from paramilitary operations since Sunday.
Since April 2023, war has raged between Sudan’s armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, killing tens of thousands of people and causing the world’s worst displacement and humanitarian crisis.
The two sides are currently engaged in deadly fighting over central Sudan’s agricultural Al-Jazira state, which has been under paramilitary control since late last year.
On Sunday, the army reported that the RSF’s Al-Jazira commander, Abu Aqla Kaykal, had abandoned the paramilitary group, bringing “a large number of his forces” to “fight alongside our army” in what they described as the first high-profile defection to the military’s side.
As war-weary citizens readied for further attacks, a spokesperson for army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said Kaykal and others who defected would be granted “amnesty”.
‘Vengeful’ attacks
Mere hours after the army took control of Tamboul — 75 kilometres (46 miles) north of Wad Madani — eyewitnesses reported RSF troops were back “rampaging” through the city.
They said paramilitary soldiers were “shooting randomly in the air” and forcing civilians to carry looted cargo.
By Tuesday, the RSF had “repelled an army attempt” to regain the town of Tamboul, a paramilitary source told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The RSF has long been accused of rampant looting, laying siege to entire villages and systemic sexual violence in Al-Jazira and across Sudan.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians, indiscriminately shelling residential areas and blocking or looting aid.
In the town of Rufaa, just 50 kilometres north of the state capital, the local resistance committee on Tuesday said RSF attacks on a series of villages in eastern Al-Jazira resulted in at least 20 deaths.
The activists accused the paramilitaries of carrying out “vengeful operations against defenceless” civilians, in response to Kaykal’s defection.
According to the volunteer group Central Observatory for Human Rights, at least seven towns and villages have been hit by “vengeful attacks that pay no heed to the rights of civilians during wartime”.