Paramilitary Shelling Kills 3 in Omdurman after Sudan Army Gains

Army soldiers walk in front of the damaged Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, after it was taken over by Sudan's army Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Army soldiers walk in front of the damaged Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, after it was taken over by Sudan's army Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
TT
20

Paramilitary Shelling Kills 3 in Omdurman after Sudan Army Gains

Army soldiers walk in front of the damaged Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, after it was taken over by Sudan's army Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)
Army soldiers walk in front of the damaged Republican Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, after it was taken over by Sudan's army Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo)

Three civilians were killed Sunday in an artillery attack by paramilitaries on Omdurman, part of Greater Khartoum, a medical source told AFP, two days after the army recaptured the capital's presidential palace in a major symbolic victory.

Eyewitnesses in the area said the bombardments by the Rapid Support Forces were some of the heaviest in recent months.

Since April 2023, the RSF has been fighting Sudan's regular army in a war that has killed tens of thousands, uprooted over 12 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.

Analysts have warned that the army's gains, while significant, are unlikely to end the fighting, as the paramilitary claimed territory in remote areas of the country and attacked a famine-hit displacement camp in the western Darfur region.

Since it began, the war has been marked by mass atrocities against civilians, including bombs and artillery routinely hitting homes, markets and displacement camps.

"Before, there used to be four or five rounds of shelling, and there was time between one strike and the next," one resident of Omdurman told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of retaliation.

"This morning there were seven, one right after the other," he said.

The medical source at Al-Nao hospital, one of the city's last functioning health facilities, said "two children and a woman were killed and eight others injured in the shelling".

Clearing operation

In recent days, the army and allied armed groups have regained most of Khartoum proper's government district, just across the Nile from Omdurman.

RSF fighters remain stationed in parts of the city center including the airport, as well as the capital's south and west.

From their positions in western Omdurman, they have regularly launched strikes on civilian areas.

In February, over 50 people were killed in a single RSF artillery attack on a busy Omdurman market.

After a year and a half of humiliating army defeats, the tide seemed to turn late last year, when a military counteroffensive through central Sudan dislodged the RSF from key bases.

Since January, the army has retaken much of the capital Khartoum, with the army and allied armed groups on Friday seizing the country's presidential palace.

The paramilitary force responded with what it called a "lightning operation" including a drone strike that killed three journalists and a number of army personnel.

The military has since launched a clearing operation to push the RSF out of the city center, on Saturday retaking several strategic state institutions including the central bank, state intelligence headquarters and the national museum.

An RSF source on Saturday told AFP the paramilitary had "withdrawn from some locations" but that forces were waging "a fierce battle" near the airport.

The army has also seized key infrastructure, pushing on Saturday through Tuti Bridge to reclaim Tuti Island, which sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles in the center of Greater Khartoum and has been under paramilitary control for nearly two years.

Attacks nationwide

Despite the army's advances in the capital, Sudan remains effectively split in two, with the army holding the east and north while the RSF controls nearly all of the western region of Darfur and parts of the south.

It has been unable to seize the North Darfur state capital El-Fasher -- crucial to consolidating its hold on the vast western region -- despite a 10-month siege.

RSF shelling on the famine-hit displacement camp of Abu Shouk killed two civilians and injured three others, the local activists' committee in El-Fasher said on Sunday.

The day before, the El-Fasher resistance committee said at least 45 civilians were killed when the paramilitary seized the small town of Al-Malha, around 200 kilometers northeast of El-Fasher.

Al-Malha is one of the northernmost towns in the vast desert region between Sudan and Libya, where the RSF's critical resupply lines have come under increasing attack in recent months by army-allied armed groups.

On Sunday, the paramilitary also claimed control of Lagawa, a town in Sudan's southern West Kordofan state, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) southwest of Khartoum.

Eyewitnesses in the town told AFP that RSF fighters had set up checkpoints on the streets.



Israeli Settlers Rampage at a Military Base in the West Bank

Israeli soldiers stand guard as Israeli settlers tour in the old city-center and market of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on June 28, 2025. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
Israeli soldiers stand guard as Israeli settlers tour in the old city-center and market of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on June 28, 2025. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
TT
20

Israeli Settlers Rampage at a Military Base in the West Bank

Israeli soldiers stand guard as Israeli settlers tour in the old city-center and market of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on June 28, 2025. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
Israeli soldiers stand guard as Israeli settlers tour in the old city-center and market of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on June 28, 2025. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)

Dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged around a military base in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, setting fires, vandalizing military vehicles, spraying graffiti and attacking soldiers, the military said.

Sunday night’s unrest came after several attacks in the West Bank carried out by Jewish settlers and anger at their arrests by security forces attempting to contain the violence over the past few days, The Associated Press said.

More than 100 settlers on Wednesday evening entered the West Bank town of Kfar Malik, setting property ablaze and opening fire on Palestinians who tried to stop them, Najeb Rostom, head of the local council, said. Three Palestinians were killed after the military intervened. Israeli security forces arrested five settlers.

Far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has often defended Israelis accused of similar crimes, offered a rare condemnation of Sunday's violence. “Attacking security forces, security facilities, and Israeli soldiers who are our brothers, our protectors, is a red line, and must be dealt with in full severity. We are brothers,” he wrote on X.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid told Israel’s Army radio that the riots were carried out by “Jewish terrorists, gangs of criminals, who feel backed by the (governing) coalition.”

A hard-line supporter of Jewish settlements, Ben-Gvir was previously convicted in Israel of racist incitement and support for terrorist groups, and has called for the deportation of all Arab citizens from Israel. Though once widely shunned by Israel’s politicians, Ben-Gvir’s influence has grown and alongside a shift to the right in the country’s electorate has further emboldened violence from extremist settlers in the West Bank.

Footage on Israeli media showed dozens of young, religious men typically associated with “hilltop youth,” an extremist movement of Israeli settlers who occupy West Bank hilltops and have been accused of attacking Palestinians and their property. The footage showed security forces using stun grenades as dozens of settlers gathered around the military base just north of Ramallah. The Israeli military released photos of the infrastructure burned in the attack, which it said included “systems that help thwart terrorist attacks and maintain security.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed Monday to “eradicate this violence from the root,” and implored the extremist settlers to remember that many of the security forces are exhausted reservists serving multiple rounds of duty.

Over the past two years of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Palestinian residents in the West Bank have reported a major increase in Israeli checkpoints and delays across the territory. Israel, meanwhile, says threats from the West Bank against its citizens are on the rise.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. The West Bank is home to some 3 million Palestinians live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, and 500,000 Jewish settlers. The international community overwhelmingly considers settlements illegal.