In their attack on El-Fasher, the final major Darfuri city to escape their grasp, Sudan’s paramilitary forces have killed at least 165 civilians in ten days, campaigners reported Wednesday.
According to the city’s resistance committee, a volunteer aid organization, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), engaged in a bloody battle with the regular army since April 2023, bombarded the besieged city with over 750 mortar rounds and artillery shells.
The commission stated that medical facilities had verified the death toll. It said that what it called a “bloody massacre” had struck markets, residential neighborhoods, and camps for displaced people.
The battle for El-Fasher has intensified in recent weeks as the RSF has sought to compensate for its loss of the capital Khartoum last month.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled by the increasingly catastrophic situation” in North Darfur state and its capital El-Fasher.
According to a statement from his spokesperson Farhan Haq, Guterres was “deeply concerned by reports of harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary detention of displaced people at checkpoints.”
In the third year of the conflict, 13 million people have been displaced and tens of thousands have died.
The war has essentially split the nation in two, with the RSF ruling almost all of Darfur and portions of the south, and the army dominating the center, east, and north.
Three of the displacement camps outside of El-Fasher, which have been scenes of recent conflict, are among the five districts of Sudan where famine has been declared.
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