Gunfire could be heard in the southeastern city of Sennar in Sudan on Monday, activists and residents said, hours after observer groups reported multiple casualties when a market was shelled in the city on the Blue Nile the previous day. 

The Emergency Lawyers NGO, which has monitored civilian deaths and other humanitarian violations during Sudan's civil war, said at least 31 people were killed and 100 wounded since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) resumed an assault on the city — with many of them killed when the RSF shelled a market on Sunday. 

Heavy rains in Sudan had slowed military movements and led to reduced levels of fighting in recent weeks in the area. 

Elsewhere in the country, Darfur governor Mini Minawi accused RSF forces of attacking el-Fasher with drones, in one of relatively few parts of Darfur still held by forces allied to the military government.

Former coup allies turn on each other

The RSF, once an ally of the country's military in the 2021 coup that ousted the nascent civilian government established following the removal of strongman Omar al-Bashir in 2019, is now fighting against the army for control of the country.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo was once the deputy of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, now the country's de facto ruler, at least where his forces maintain control.

The RSF, having claimed its other major city of Sinja in July, is trying to cement its grip on Sennar as it pushes south into the region from the capital Khartoum.

Tens of thousands displaced, facing malnutrition, 16 months into conflict

Although accurate data has been hard to come by since the sudden outbreak of fighting last April, the UN and NGOs warn Sudan is facing acute food shortages as a result of the conflict. 

"We cannot be clearer: Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening," a statement earlier this month from the Norwegian Refugee Council and other partners warned.

It lamented ongoing debates about whether the statistical threshhold for a famine had been met, with adequate comprehensive research not really possible in the warzone, as a waste of time. 

"People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions," the groups said.

Some 10 million people have been displaced by the fighting, the UN estimates, most of them internally and also in some cases across borders to countries like Ethiopia and Chad. That equates to more than one-fifth of Sudan's total population.

Army rejects international peacekeeping force

A UN report published late last week found that both sides were guilty of atrocities that amounted to war crimes and called for the immediate deployment of a neutral international peacekeeping force charged primarily with protecting civilians. 

It also recommended a country-wide embargo on all arms sales, be they to the army or to militia groups like the RSF.

Sudan's army-aligned Foreign Ministry on Saturday said it rejected these recommendations, calling the idea of international peacekeepers "the wish of Sudan's enemies" and saying "it will not be fulfilled."

The army has, if anything, been losing ground to the RSF since the conflict broke out. 

The army's de facto capital is now effectively the northeastern Red Sea port city of Port Sudan, far removed from the front lines.

msh/rm (AFP, Reuters)