Army air strikes 'kill more than 1,700 civilians' in Sudan's civil war

Actual number could be far higher as war monitoring group records more than 130 strikes on residential areas

Sudan's armed forces have been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in a devastating civil war since 2023. AFP

Air strikes by Sudan's army since the start of the civil war in 2023 have killed at least 1,719 civilians and wounded more than a thousand others, according to findings by an independent group monitoring the conflict.

A new report by Sudan Witness documented 384 air strikes launched by the army. It says the figures were “conservative”, with the actual number of strikes and casualties believed to be much higher.

The report was released on Wednesday, the same day the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – the army's enemy in the 31-month war – accused the Sudanese Armed Forces of killing dozens in a drone attack on a key oilfield in the south of the country.

The RSF has no conventional air force but uses an arsenal of drones. The report's findings are the latest in a string of accusations levelled against both the army and the RSF by the UN and others since the war broke out in April 2023.

While the RSF is accused of ethnically motivated killings in Darfur and other abuses in the capital Khartoum, the army is accused of indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombardment of RSF targets in densely populated areas, killing and wounding thousands of civilians.

Army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo are the subject of US sanctions over allegations of war crimes.

Sudanese refugees from Darfur arrived during a sandstorm at a refugee camp in Chad. Reuters

Sudan Witness said it applied a “high threshold for registering a reported air strike, and where casualty reports vary, records the lowest reliably reported number”.

“Therefore, the actual number of strikes and casualty counts are likely much higher,” it said.

“Even so, the widespread pattern of strikes on populated areas indicates that the SAF is not taking adequate measures to prevent civilian harm.” More than half of the documented strikes hit civilian areas, including residential districts, health and educational centres, markets, and humanitarian sites such as camps for the internally displaced, it added.

Residential areas were the most frequently hit civilian location, it said, suffering 135 of 384 documented air strikes documented.

Over half of those strikes were corroborated by open-source data, with satellite imagery and verified footage consistently showing widespread destruction, sometimes reducing entire residential blocks to rubble.

The SAF, said the report, is the only side in the war capable of conducting air strikes, or firing from manned aircraft. However, both sides have in recent months conducted aerial strikes using drones.

The repeated occurrence of air strikes on homes, markets and hospitals is blamed for having deepened the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and disrupted essential services. Strikes in densely populated areas erode civilian safety, livelihoods and critical infrastructure across the country, the report added.

The war in Sudan is essentially a power struggle between Gen Al Burhan and his former ally Gen Dagalo. Both men aspired to lead the resource-rich but impoverished nation of 50 million people.

Their rivalry turned into an open conflict after months of tension. Nearly three years later, tens of thousands have been killed in the fighting, the latest in a seemingly endless cycle of domestic conflicts that have fatigued and scarred the vast Afro-Arab nation.

The current war has also displaced more than 12 million people and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with half the population facing hunger and pockets of famine emerging, mostly in western Sudan.