Port Sudan, Sudan (AFP) – A Sudanese military air strike on a north Khartoum mosque killed seven civilians on Friday, pro-democracy lawyers said, in the 19th month of a war marked by widespread abuses.
Friday’s attack occurred on a mosque in Khartoum North, also known as Bahri, which has been under near-total control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since the war between the paramilitaries and the army began in April 2023.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war which has left the northeast African country on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies.
“The attack occurred as worshippers were leaving the mosque” after Friday noon prayers, said the Emergency Lawyers, who have been documenting human rights abuses throughout the war.
The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups across Sudan delivering frontline aid during the conflict, confirmed the death toll and said “a number of wounded” had also been transported for treatment.
The attack was “part of a series of arbitrary military assaults that do not discriminate between civilians and military targets,” the lawyers said in a statement.
They called the strike a “crime against humanity and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of deliberately targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
A United Nations investigation found both sides committed rights abuses with the RSF particularly implicated in sexual violence.
The war between the army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and his deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, began in the capital Khartoum and forced the army-aligned government to relocate to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Violence has also been particularly fierce in the country’s far-western Darfur region, which borders Chad.
On a visit to Darfur early this month, the United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, called for immediate international action to address Sudan’s deepening crisis.
Sudan has the highest number of malnutrition cases in eastern Africa, with an estimated 3.7 million children aged six to 59 months and one million pregnant and breastfeeding women acutely malnourished, the UN said in a report this week.
Aid agencies warn that 40 percent or more of the country’s population will need humanitarian food assistance next year, the report said.
The war has also led to accusations of foreign involvement.
On Tuesday the army-backed government accused the RSF of launching drones assembled in the United Arab Emirates from Chad.
Last year, United Nations experts tasked with monitoring an arms embargo on Darfur said accusations that the UAE had funnelled weapons to the RSF through Chad were “credible”.
The UAE has repeatedly denied supporting the RSF.
© Agence France-Presse
