
Sudan crisis escalates
According to a UN organization, the number of persons internally displaced by violence between opposing armed factions has more than doubled in the past week to almost 700,000.
Despite the fact that ceasefire talks are being held in Saudi Arabia, the rise in displacements has stoked worries of an escalation in bloodshed.
Neighborhoods as a whole have become deserted as people leave their houses.
With a population of 5.4 million, Khartoum has been ravaged by the fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which started on April 15.
The RSF claimed on Tuesday that a military air attack had struck an Ottoman-era palace in the heart of Khartoum.
The RSF’s assertion hasn’t been verified by another source.
The capital of Sudan, Khartoum, is still experiencing airstrikes and ground combat.
The palace, which is now a museum, was constructed in 1832 when Sudan was a part of the Ottoman Empire.
The palace sits near to Sudan’s new presidential palace, which Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army’s top general, occupied before the fighting started.
Sudan crisis escalates
Since Monday, fierce fighting have been going on in the neighborhood, but a local who talked to the BBC was unsure if the old palace had been harmed.
Other locals reported seeing military fighter jets flying all over south Khartoum and hearing heavy gunfire coming from the middle-class neighborhood of al-Sahafa, which is not far from the closed international airport.
By this point in the fight, there have been more than 600 fatalities and 5,000 injuries.
Along with the western region of Darfur, fierce fighting has also been reported in the two cities Bahri and Omdurman that are close to Khartoum.
“Many IDPs [internally displaced people] are sheltering with relatives, while others are gathering in schools, mosques, and public buildings,” said Paul Dillon, a spokesperson for the UN’s International Organization for Migration.