Twenty-two people were killed and 17 others wounded on Saturday when artillery fire was unleashed on the town of El Fasher in the vast Darfur region, more than fifteen months after the war broke out in Sudan, a medical source said.

“The shelling of the animal fair and Redajev district killed 22 people and wounded 17 others,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity at the Saudi hospital in Fasser; eyewitnesses spoke of “cannon and mortar fire” by paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the Sudanese armed forces.

The bombing “destroyed houses”, according to the same sources.

Since early May, fierce fighting has raged in the city, the capital of North Darfur state, the only urban center in western Sudan that has not fallen into the hands of paramilitaries.

The DTY have laid siege to the city, trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians, in their campaign to take it over.

Fasher has been relatively calm since early July, when paramilitaries bombed a market in the town, killing 15 civilians and injuring 29 others.

According to an estimate by the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières, MSF), at least 260 people had been killed in the fighting in El Fasser as of June 24.

The war broke out on 15 April 2023 between the army under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitaries under the then number two of the military junta in Sudan, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives — some estimates put as many as 150,000 dead, according to the US special envoy for Sudan, Tom Periello.

The hostilities have also forced more than 11 million people to become internally displaced and refugees, have caused widespread damage to infrastructure and pushed Sudan to the brink of famine.

Both warring sides have been accused of war crimes, in particular of deliberately targeting civilians and obstructing, or looting, humanitarian aid for the civilian population.