Paramilitary forces attacked the armed forces’ General Staff in central Khartoum today for a second straight day, witnesses said, in the sixth month of a war between rival generals that has claimed thousands of lives.

Clashes are now taking place around the General Staff with various types of weapons, eyewitnesses told AFP by phone from Khartoum. Others spoke of clashes in the town of El Obeid, 350 kilometers to the south.

Fighting between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of his former deputy chief, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has intensified since yesterday, Saturday, leading to fires in important buildings in the center of the Sudanese capital. .

On social media, users posted photos, verified by AFP, showing flames burning monuments, buildings and skyscrapers, including that of the Greater Nile Petroleum Oil Company.

The photos also show buildings with broken windows and charred walls or riddled with bullet holes.

Since it broke out on April 15, the war has claimed nearly 7,500 lives, according to a moderate estimate by the non-governmental organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

It has displaced more than five million people, 2.8 million of whom have fled their homes to escape incessant airstrikes, artillery fire and street fighting in Khartoum’s districts.

The millions of people who remain in the city woke up this morning to clouds of smoke darkening the skyline, while bombs and gunfire rang out in the capital.

“We hear huge explosions,” people told AFP today in the Mayo district (southern Khartoum), where the army attacked Rapid Support Force bases with artillery fire.

More than 50 people were killed last week by airstrikes in a Mayo market, according to the UN, in one of the deadliest attacks since the beginning of the conflict.

The violence is concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur, where targeted attacks by the Rapid Support Force are the subject of a new investigation by the International Criminal Court.

Fighting also took place in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, where eyewitnesses spoke of exchanges of fire between the army and paramilitaries.