The blast at the crowded market, which observers called a likely war crime, was a grim reminder of the brutal losses suffered by both sides in the two-year civil war.
At least 54 people were killed and dozens wounded in a Sudanese military airstrike on a crowded market in the country's western Darfur region, according to local watchdog groups who called the attack a likely war crime.
Monday's attack came as Sudan's military continued to make rapid gains in the capital Khartoum, where it captured the presidential palace on Friday. The military is now trying to push its enemy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, out of the city entirely.
But the reported atrocity in Darfur was a grim reminder of the brutal toll of Sudan's war, Africa's largest, which has been going on for two years. Videos and photographs of the aftermath of the strike in Tura, a small town in North Darfur, showed dozens of charred bodies and partial human remains strewn across a smoldering area in the town's market.
The videos were geolocated to Tura by the Sudan Witness Project at the Center for Information Resilience, a nonprofit that documents potential war crimes. Satellite images and data from NASA satellites that detect fires confirmed that about 10,000 square meters of land had burned on Monday.
The exact death toll is unknown. One Sudanese monitoring group said dozens had died. The American international human rights group Avaaz, citing local groups, put the death toll at more than 200. A handwritten list of the dead provided by activists in Darfur included 54 names.
