South of Sudan's capital is engaged in combat after generals briefly reappear
South of Sudan's capital is engaged in combat after generals briefly reappear
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Wad Madani: Witnesses claim that on Thursday, airstrikes, street fighting, and artillery fire shook the Sudanese capital Khartoum as well as El-Obeid, a significant southern city.

A resident of El-Obeid, 350 kilometers southwest of Khartoum, claimed that paramilitary bases of the Rapid Support Forces were the target of artillery fire.

Since April 15, there have been at least 3,000 fatalities and more than 3.3 million displaced due to fighting between the RSF and the regular army, which is being led by rival generals.

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Another El-Obeid resident, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, claimed that army jets had been attacking paramilitaries on Thursday as they fired anti-aircraft weapons in return.

Three air raids were seen in the early morning, according to witnesses in the south of Khartoum.

One of them said, "The blasts were terrifying.

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The army charged the RSF on Wednesday with using a drone to target a residential area of the capital and "14 civilians dead and 15 injured."

At least 13 civilian deaths, according to locals, were reported.

The battle pits RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo and army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against each other.

Gen. Al-Burhan made an appearance in a rare video clip on Tuesday, shortly after Dagalo's audio recording was made public.

Gen. Al-Burhan is seen in the less than one minute long video greeting the top generals in the army while toting a pistol and an automatic rifle. He is dressed in a T-shirt and cargo pants.

The vast complex in the city's center has seen many clashes between the opposing forces.

Dagalo was last spotted in a brief video clip that the paramilitaries produced at the beginning of the conflict, which has been going on for four months.

But he has since made several audio recordings available, the most recent of which was on Monday night and in which he told Sudanese he was prepared for war but was willing to "choose peace."

He would fight until "victory or martyrdom," according to Daglo's fighters.

The RSF chief also brought up the vast western region of Darfur, which saw a bloody conflict in the early 2000s and has experienced some of the worst violence in the current conflict.

The paramilitaries have referred to the bloodshed in Darfur as "tribal conflicts," but human rights activists accuse the RSF and its allied Arab militias of carrying out reported atrocities like rape, looting, and the mass murder of ethnic minorities.

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According to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Darfur has been launched.

In Darfur, where 300,000 people perished in a conflict from 2003 that prompted the ICC to accuse former leader Omar Bashir of genocide, he issued a warning against "allowing history to repeat itself."

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