Smoke billows above residential buildings in Khartoum on April 16, 2023. | AFP

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has launched a major offensive characterized by heavy bombardment in the capital, Khartoum, in a bid to regain areas under the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to media reports.

Four people were killed during artillery shelling by RSF after the army warplanes carried out air strikes in the capital and north of Khartoum in its biggest such assault in months on Thursday, Qatar-based Al Jazeera news outlet reported.

The Sudanese army has taken took control of three main bridges, including two that connect the city of Omdurman with the capital, Khartoum after attacking military sites belonging to RSF, according to Al Jazeera.

Witnesses who spoke to the BBC also recount heavy fighting as SAF troops crossed two key bridges over the River Nile – which had separated government-controlled areas in Omdurman from the regions controlled by the RSF.

Telecommunications have been cut off in Omdurman amidst the ongoing fighting between the army and the paramilitary group.

The conflict between the army under General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF of General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, erupted in April 15, 2023, and has killed an estimated 150,000 people, displaced 10 million others and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that Sudan’s warring parties, particularly the RSF, have committed widespread atrocities including gang rape and forcing women and girls into marriages in Khartoum.

The 89-page investigation documents widespread sexual violence, as well as forced and child marriage during the conflict, in Khartoum and its sister cities.

On September 25, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres voiced concern over “escalation” in Sudan’s conflict to the country’s army chief General Burhan during when they met on the sidelines of a diplomatic gathering in New York.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, also told a UN event that the world must scale up its efforts in Sudan as she regretted that many were ignoring “a catastrophe of truly unfathomable proportions.”

“As we sit here today, more than 25 million Sudanese face acute hunger. Many are in famine, some reduced to eating leaves and dirt to stave off hunger pangs – but not starvation,” she said.