40 killed in Darfur as UN’s Sudan chief quits

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An air raid on Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region killed at least 40 civilians Wednesday, according to a medical source, as the head of the UN mission to the country resigned.

Volker Perthes, who has been “persona non grata” by Sudanese authorities since June, warned the United Nations Security Council again in his final briefing before leaving the post that Sudan’s war risks further deterioration.

“Forty civilians have been killed in an air strike that hit two markets and a number of the city’s neighborhoods,” the medical source told AFP from a hospital in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. The source asked for anonymity out of security concerns.

Since battles began on April 15 between the regular army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, nearly 7,500 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

However, more than five million people have been uprooted, including one million who fled across borders, according to UN figures.

Over 10 days in August, more than 50,000 people fled the city, according to the UN.

Intensified fighting, Witnesses in Nyala had reported earlier on Wednesday that air strikes had fallen on two markets and caused civilian casualties in Sudan’s second-biggest city.

In conclusion, the western region of Darfur—the size of France and home to a quarter of Sudan’s population—had already seen some of the war’s worst unrest before violence intensified last month. Read more

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