By: FRANCE 24
For a third day in a row, drones targeted the army-held Sudanese capital and the Khartoum international airport in attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the country’s regular military has been battling since April 2023.
Drones targeted the army-held Sudanese capital and its airport on Thursday, witnesses told AFP, marking the third consecutive day of such strikes.
“At 4:00 am (0200 GMT) I heard the sound of two drones passing above us,” one witness said, adding that the drones were headed towards military facilities.
Another witness meanwhile said he saw the drones heading towards the airport, adding that he heard explosions shortly afterwards.
Since Tuesday, the airport – out of service for over two years – has come under repeated drone attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the regular army has been battling since April 2023.
The airport was due to reopen on Wednesday, but this was postponed “under further notice”, an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Following a months-long offensive, the army recaptured Khartoum from the RSF in March, but the city remains largely devastated, with frequent power outages and the paramilitaries intensifying drone attacks on the city.
More than a million people who had been displaced by the war have returned over the past 10 months, according to the United Nations’ migration agency.
In the past weeks, the government has sought to reopen key services and move institutions back to Khartoum after they had largely fled to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
Now well into its third year, the war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced about 12 million more and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Source: france24.com