Khartoum: In a bid to reassert its power in the country, the Sudanese military on Sunday launched a series of airstrikes on a paramilitary base near the capital city of Khartoum. The clash between the government and the military left as many as 25 people dead.
Eyewitnesses said that after the attack on the paramilitary bases, the army went on to strike a government paramilitary base called Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the city of Omdurman.
The clash between the RSF and the military forced the former to seize the presidential palace, army chief’s residence, state television station and airports in Khartoum, the northern city of Merowe, El Fasher and West Darfur state. Apart from killing 25, around 183 were also left heavily wounded.
The Sudanese air force told people to stay indoors while it conducted what it called an aerial survey of RSF activity, and a holiday was declared in Khartoum state for Sunday, closing schools, banks and government offices.
According to reports, sustained firing broke out at one of its bases in the Sudanese capital on Saturday morning and the sound could be heard in a number of areas, including central Khartoum and neighboring Bahri.
Apart from the recent faceoff, the army-RSF rivalry dates back to the rule of autocratic President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in 2019. Under the former president, the paramilitary force grew out of former militias known as the Janjaweed that carried out a brutal crackdown in Sudan’s Darfur region during the decades of conflict there.
In a rare televised speech Thursday, a top army general warned of potential clashes with paramilitary force, accusing it of deploying forces in Khartoum and other areas of Sudan without the army’s consent. The RSF defended the presence of its forces in an earlier statement.
Egyptian national carrier EgyptAir on Saturday suspended flights to and from Khartoum for 72 hours in the wake of fierce clashes between Sudan’s military and the country’s powerful paramilitary force that erupted Saturday in the capital and elsewhere in the African nation.
Meanwhile, State-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) said one of its Airbus aircraft “had an accident” at Sudan’s Khartoum airport before its scheduled departure to Riyadh on Saturday, without providing further details.
With inputs from agencies
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