An airstrike by Sudan’s military ripped through a crowded market in the country’s western region of Darfur, killing at least 54 people and wounding dozens more, according to local monitoring groups that called the attack a likely war crime.
The attack on Monday came as Sudan’s military continued to make sweeping gains in the capital, Khartoum, where it seized the presidential palace on Friday. The military is now trying to drive its foe, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, entirely out of the city.
The reported atrocity in Darfur, though, was a grim reminder of the brutal toll of Sudan’s war, the largest in Africa, as it approaches two full years. Videos and photographs from the aftermath of the strike in Toura, a small town in North Darfur, showed dozens of charred bodies and partial human remains strewed across a smoldering expanse in a town market.