At least 56 people killed

PORT SUDAN, Feb 02 (AFP): Artillery shelling and air strikes killed at least 56 people across greater Khartoum on Saturday, according to a medical source and activists, the latest bloodshed in Sudan's devastating war.

Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023 that has intensified this month with the army fighting to take back control of the capital.

RSF shelling killed 54 and injured 158 people at a busy market in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, overwhelming the city's Al-Nao Hospital, according to a medical source and the health ministry.

"The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that's why the victims and the wounded are so many," one survivor told AFP.

The RSF denied carrying out the attack, which French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said caused "utter carnage" at the hospital.

Across the Nile in Khartoum proper, two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area, said the local Emergency Response Room, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating emergency care across Sudan.

Although the RSF has used drones in attacks, including on Saturday, the fighter jets of the regular armed forces maintain a monopoly on air strikes.

Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

In addition to killing tens of thousands of people, the war has uprooted more than 12 million and decimated Sudan's fragile infrastructure, forcing most health facilities out of service.

MSF's general secretary Chris Lockyear was at the Al-Nao Hospital Saturday, where he said "the morgue is full of dead bodies".

"I can see the lives of men, women and children torn apart, with injured people lying in every possible space in the emergency room as medics do what they can," he said in a statement.

A volunteer at the hospital told AFP it faced dire shortages of "shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded".

Al-Nao, one of the last medical facilities operating in Omdurman, has been repeatedly attacked. According to the Sudanese doctors' union, one shell fell "just metres away" from the hospital.

The union said most of the victims were women and children, and called on nurses and doctors in the area to head to the hospital to relieve a "severe shortage of medical staff".

The fighting in the capital comes weeks after the army launched an offensive across central Sudan, reclaiming Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani before setting its sights on Khartoum.

The RSF has since remained in control of the road between Wad Madani and Khartoum, but on Saturday an army-allied militia claimed control of the towns of Tamboul, Rufaa, Al-Hasaheisa and Al-Hilaliya, some 125 kilometres (77 miles) southeast of the capital.