A group of local activists said that at least 60 individuals have been killed in artillery attacks and militia drones at a displacement shelter within the besieged city of El Fasher in western Sudan.
The El Fasher resistance committee confirmed that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group attacked the Dar al-Arqam displacement center, which is located on the grounds of a university.
The committee said in a statement that the bodies were still trapped in the rubble, which they described as being a “massacre,” and urged the international community to step in.
In a subsequent statement, it claimed that the shelter was struck a total of twice with drones and eight times with artillery attacks on Friday and Saturday.
The committee, which is part of a group of activists and coordinates aid and documents abuses in the conflict, reported that “Children, women, and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned. The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.”
An independent medical organization known as the Sudan Doctors Network reported that 53 people died in the attacks, of which 14 were children and 15 were women.
The RSF has been engaged in a civil war with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023.
Meanwhile, its militants have besieged El Fasher for over 500 days, and the families are starving.
The final state capital in the Darfur region, which has not been occupied by RSF, is El Fasher, home to 400,000 people. It is now a battle line in the war as the paramilitaries seek to gain control of the west.
The UN has termed the war in Sudan as one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the 21st century. More than 150,000 have been killed, and over 14 million and more people have been displaced. Almost 25 million individuals have been subjected to severe starvation.
The international powers have led to countrywide fighting, which is ongoing in the absence of an effective global effort to bring an end to the bloodshed.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Friday that he was “appalled by the RSF’s endless and wanton disregard for civilian life” in El Fasher.
He further added, “Despite repeated calls, including my own, for specific care to be taken to protect civilians, they continue instead to kill, injure and displace civilians, and to attack civilian objects, including [internally displaced people’s] shelters, hospitals and mosques, with total disregard for international law. This must end.”
The ongoing war in Sudan broke out in 2023, but it is a continuation of decades of violence. The International Criminal Court on Monday made its first move to convict a suspect of crimes in Darfur, convicting a leader of a militia in Darfur over atrocities committed in the country over 20 years ago.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman or Ali Kushayb is also known by the nom de guerre, was accused of being a commander of the Janjaweed militia, which the RSF had evolved.
Omar al-Bashir, a former president of Sudan, is also subject to the ICC on the charges of genocide.
Türk added that the RSF, along with all sides to the war, might “draw lessons from this week’s conviction of Ali Kushayb.”
