An airstrike by Sudan’s military ripped through a crowded market in the country’s western region of Darfur, killing at least 54 people and wounding dozens more, according to local monitoring groups which called the attack a likely war crime.
The attack on Monday came as Sudan’s military continued to make sweeping gains in the capital, Khartoum, where it seized the presidential palace on Friday. The military is now trying to drive its foe, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, entirely out the city.
The reported atrocity in Darfur, though, was a grim reminder of the brutal toll of Sudan’s war, the largest in Africa, as it approaches two full years. Videos and photographs from the aftermath of the strike in Toura, a small town in North Darfur, showed dozens of charred bodies and partial human remains strewed across a smoldering expanse in a town market.
The videos were geolocated to Toura by the Sudan Witness Project at the Centre for Information Resilience, a nonprofit that documents potential war crimes. Satellite images and data from NASA satellites that detect fires confirmed that an area of around 10,000 square meters was burned on Monday.
The exact toll was unclear. One Sudanese monitoring group said dozens had been killed. The American international advocacy group Avaaz, citing local groups, put it at over 200 dead. A handwritten list of fatalities provided by activists in Darfur had 54 names.
