A Sudanese monitor accused the army on Tuesday of carrying out one of the deadliest air strikes in the country's nearly two-year war, hitting a rebel-held town in the western region of Darfur.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group of volunteer legal professionals, said "hundreds of civilians" were killed in an "indiscriminate air strike on Tora market in North Darfur", while two residents who took part in burial operations said they had counted 270 bodies.
The United Nations on Tuesday said "dozens of casualties" were reported as a result of Monday's attack.
AFP could not independently verify a toll or reach local medics due to a telecommunications blackout in Darfur.
The army, which has been battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023, did not explicitly confirm the air strike to AFP but denied targeting civilians.
"We have counted 270 bodies buried and 380 people injured," one of the residents told AFP via the Starlink satellite internet network, with another confirming the figures. Both requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
They said security concerns meant transporting the wounded to the nearby town of Melit was difficult, while the local health facility in the small town lacked the capacity to treat mass casualties.
The strike came days after the army reclaimed the presidential palace in Khartoum -- a major victory against the RSF.
The RSF said the attack on Monday "killed over 400 and wounded hundreds". The paramilitaries control nearly all of Darfur, where the United States has accused them of committing genocide.
In a statement to AFP, military spokesman Nabil Abdallah said "false claims such as this arise whenever our forces exercise their constitutional and legitimate right to engage hostile targets".
"We abide in our air strikes by ... international law, and we absolutely cannot target innocent civilians," he continued, adding that "hardly a day goes by" without the RSF attacking densely-populated areas.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said the world body was "gravely alarmed by the continued attacks on civilians", including Monday's air strike and an RSF artillery attack on a Khartoum mosque on Sunday.
- Civilian toll -
A local advocacy group, the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees, said the army's "deliberate bombing" of the market was "a crime against humanity".
"It is deeply regrettable that some would justify the killing of innocents under the pretext of the presence of one of the parties to the conflict," they said in a statement.
Footage shared on social media, which AFP was unable to verify, purportedly showed burnt bodies and smoking debris at the Monday market, where residents of nearby towns gather weekly.
Over nearly two years, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.
Amid the near-total breakdown of Sudan's healthcare system, exact death tolls have been difficult to confirm.
The former Sudan envoy for Washington, Tom Perriello, in May last year said some estimates for the overall toll were as high as 150,000 killed.
Across the country, attacks on markets, villages and displacement camps have regularly left over 100 dead at a time.
In December, the lawyers' group reported a similar army air strike on a market in North Darfur's Kabkabiya, which killed over 100, with the UN confirming a toll of "at least 80".
Last month, a three-day RSF assault on central Sudan villages claimed hundreds of lives, with the army-backed government giving a toll of 433.
- Battle for Darfur -
Darfur, a vast region the size of France, has faced some of the war's worst violence.
In the town of El-Geneina alone, the RSF and allied militias killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in ethnically motivated attacks in 2023, UN experts determined.
Though the paramilitary has deployed highly equipped drones in Darfur, the army retains the advantage in the skies.
El-Fasher in North Darfur is the only regional state capital the RSF has not conquered, despite besieging the city for ten months.
According to analysts, the RSF is likely to intensify its campaign to consolidate its hold on the region following its defeats in Khartoum.
Meanwhile, the army, with its ranks replenished and its arsenal rebuilt, could either "be content" to retake Khartoum or push westward seeking to "fundamentally destroy the RSF" in their Darfur strongholds, said Cameron Hudson, of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
