At least 17 civilians were killed on Tuesday in an attack on a suburb of the Sudanese capital, which eyewitnesses attributed to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a medical source said.

According to eyewitnesses spoken to by AFP by phone from Wad Madani, 200 kilometers south of Khartoum, paramilitaries shelled the Karari suburb of Omdurman, northwest of the capital.

“Seventeen civilians were killed” in the attack, a medical source told the same news agency.

About 7,500 people have been killed since a power struggle broke out in Sudan on April 15 between General Mohamed Hamdan Daghlo’s security forces and armed forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto head of state after a 2021 coup, according to with the most recent assessment of the non-governmental organization ACLED.

The actual toll of the conflict’s victims is believed to be much heavier, as many areas of the country are completely cut off from the rest of the world, while both camps refuse to disclose their losses.

“During the past week alone, more than 103 civilians were killed in military operations carried out by both sides in Khartoum and Omdurman,” declared Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in Geneva on Tuesday.

According to activists, more than ten bodies, which could not be identified, were buried by volunteers, as happens in most cases of people killed on the streets and not recovered by their families.

And “there is no respite,” Mr. Turk stressed, listing atrocities recounted by civilians, such as “members of the same family killed or raped,” “loved ones arrested without reason,” “disappeared,” “bodies piled on top of each other.” in the other and abandoned”, “desperate constant hunger”.

The war, which will be five months old next Friday, has turned nearly 5 million people into internally displaced persons and refugees and worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country, already one of the poorest in the world.

Mr. Turk demanded that those responsible for violations committed by both warring parties, especially for “generalized arbitrary detentions,” be held accountable.

“Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, have been secretly imprisoned under appalling conditions,” he said.

At the same time, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported yesterday that attacks against civilians have reached their peak in Khartoum.

Last year “was the deadliest weekend MSF teams have experienced in Khartoum since the war broke out five months ago,” the NGO said.

At least 49 civilians were killed, while MSF teams treated more than 100 injured. There is also information about other victims.

At least 43 civilians were killed in airstrikes attributed to the military on Sunday morning. While on Saturday morning, another six civilians were killed in an attack against densely populated areas. The injured in these two incidents were dozens.

In the town of Al Fasir, in the vast Darfur region (west), where heavy fighting is also raging, four civilians were killed and 48 others were injured on Saturday.

MSF teams are now called upon to assist in high-casualty incidents almost daily, according to the organization.