Wad Madani (Sudan): Witnesses said that air strikes, street battles and artillery fire rocked the Sudanese capital Khartoum and the southern city of El-Obeid today, Thursday.

A resident of El-Obeid, 350 km southwest of Khartoum, said, “Artillery fire targeted paramilitary bases of the Rapid Support Forces.”

Fighting between the RSF and the regular army, led by feuding generals, has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced more than 3.3 million since April 15.

Another resident of El-Obeid, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said that on Thursday, army planes bombed the paramilitary forces, who were responding with anti-aircraft fire.

In southern Khartoum, eyewitnesses reported three air strikes in the early morning.

“The explosions were terrifying,” said one.

On Wednesday, the army accused the Rapid Support Forces of targeting a residential area in the capital with a drone strike, which left “14 civilians dead and 15 wounded.”

Residents said that at least 13 civilians were killed.

The conflict between the army commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and his former deputy, the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

On Tuesday, Major General Al-Burhan appeared in a rare video clip, shortly after an audio recording of Dagalo was published.

In a video of less than a minute, Major General Al-Burhan is seen carrying a pistol and machine gun and wearing a shirt and heavy pants at the army headquarters saluting senior army officers.

The huge complex in central Khartoum has been the site of frequent clashes between the warring parties.

Dagolo was last seen in a short video the paramilitary forces filmed in the early days of the conflict, now in its fourth month.

But he has released several audio recordings since then, the latest on Monday evening in which he told the Sudanese that he was willing to “choose peace” but remain “ready for war”.

Dagalo said fighters loyal to him would fight until “victory or martyrdom”.

The RSF commander also referred to the vast western region of Darfur, which in the early 2000s witnessed a bloody war and witnessed some of the worst violence in the new conflict.

Paramilitary groups have described the bloodshed in Darfur as “tribal feuds”, while rights activists blame the RSF and allied Arab militias for reported atrocities including rape, looting and mass killings of ethnic minorities.

Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said last week that the International Criminal Court had opened a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Darfur.

He warned against “allowing history to repeat itself” in Darfur, where 300,000 people were killed in a conflict from 2003 that prompted the International Criminal Court to charge former leader Omar al-Bashir with genocide.