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.

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 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 comes days after the army reclaimed the presidential palace in Khartoum -- a major victory against the RSF.

The paramilitary, which controls nearly all of Darfur where the United States has accused it of committing genocide, said the "massacre" on Monday "killed and wounded hundreds".

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 the rules of targeting in accordance with 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.

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.

- Civilian toll -

Footage shared on social media, which AFP was unable to verify, purportedly showed charred bodies and smoking debris at the Monday market, where residents of nearby towns gather weekly.

In 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 tolls have been difficult to confirm since the war began.

The United States' former Sudan envoy Tom Perriello in May last year said some estimates 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 United Nations 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, while the monitor said over 200 were killed.

Darfur, a vast region the size of France, has faced some of the war's worst violence.

Though the paramilitary has deployed highly equipped drones in Darfur, the army retains the advantage in the skies with its warplanes, regularly striking RSF positions across the region.

North Darfur state capital El-Fasher, 40 kilometres south of Tora, is the only regional state capital the RSF has not conquered, despite besieging the city for ten months and regularly attacking the displacement camps that surround it.

According to analysts, the RSF is likely to intensify its campaign to consolidate its hold on the region, following its defeats in Khartoum.

Since the war began, both sides have been accused of targeting civilians, including indiscriminately shelling markets and residential neighbourhoods.

The RSF has specifically been accused of ethnically motivated mass killing, systematic sexual violence and rampant looting.