NEW fighting rocked Sudan’s capital this week with air strikes and drone attacks in and around Khartoum amid a worsening cholera outbreak, officials said today.

Sudan’s military launched an operation in the early hours of Thursday aimed at taking control of areas in the capital that had been in the hands of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Sudanese media reported increased military movements and air strikes in the districts of Khartoum and Omdurman, the heaviest in the capital area in months.

Khartoum health ministry spokesman Mohamed Ibrahim said that four civilians were killed and 14 others wounded in the latest fighting in the Karrari district of Omdurman, a city next to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

A military spokesman confirmed the operation was underway, but declined to comment further.

The head of Sudan’s military, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, addressed the UN general assembly in New York, claiming that “we’ve done everything we could to put an end to this war and to steer our country from the destruction being waged” by the militia.

“The operation going on in Khartoum is meant to preserve the integrity of our country, the safety of our people and our armed forces,” the military coup leader of 2021 told reporters.

“The military solution is the last one. We crave a peaceful solution that spares out people more suffering, more hunger, more displacement.”

More than 25 million Sudanese face acute hunger according to officials, with about 11 million having fled their homes in what has become the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.

UN human rights office in Geneva spokesman Jeremy Laurence said that at least 78 civilians were killed because of artillery shelling and air strikes since the beginning of September in the Khartoum area.

“Our immediate concern is for the welfare of civilians, and the likelihood of further displacement and damage to civilian infrastructure," he said.

Artillery shelling on a market in the RSF-held city of El Fasher killed at least 20 civilians on September 20 and 21, the UN warned.

The war in Sudan created environments prone to disease outbreaks, affecting millions of people already experiencing food insecurity and displacement.

There was a 20 per cent increase in deaths from cholera this week, Sudan’s health ministry said.

A total of 473 people have died from cholera since the country’s rainy season began two months ago, health officials said.