UN rights chief says civilians ‘trapped in dire circumstances’ in and round el-Fasher as RSF warns of additional ‘bloodshed’.
Greater than 540 individuals have been killed in Sudan’s North Darfur in simply three weeks as paramilitaries intensify their attritional battle for the regional capital of el-Fasher, in response to the United Nations.
“The horror unfolding in Sudan is aware of no bounds,” mentioned Volker Turk, the UN excessive commissioner for human rights, in a press release on the devastating impression of the two-year civil battle revealed on Thursday, signalling that the loss of life toll of 542 over the previous three weeks was probably “a lot greater”.
Darfur specifically has been a key battleground within the brutal battle that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Speedy Assist Forces (RSF), which has left tens of 1000’s lifeless, uprooted greater than 12 million and created what the UN describes because the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
The RSF, which misplaced Khartoum final month, has in current weeks mounted a number of assaults on el-Fasher and the close by refugee camps of Zamzam and Abu Shouk, triggering an exodus of lots of of 1000’s of individuals 60km (37 miles) throughout the desert to the city of Tawila.
Sudan’s presidential palace in central Khartoum was shelled Thursday by the RSF, a army supply informed the AFP information company, the second such assault on the capital in every week.
Turk pointed to a brand new assault three days in the past by the RSF on el-Fasher and Abu Shouk that killed at the least 40 civilians.
He mentioned he feared additional violence after the RSF issued a warning of additional “bloodshed” forward of “imminent battles”, including that civilians “trapped amid dire circumstances” in and round el-Fasher wanted to be protected.
Turk’s assertion got here because the RSF was on the cusp of seizing management of the strategic metropolis of al-Nuhud in West Kordofan, a gateway to the Darfur area, held by Sudan’s military for the reason that begin of the battle.
Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan mentioned that each side seen town as essential for gaining the higher hand within the battle.
“It’s clear that the RSF doesn’t need the military to attempt to launch assaults on its positions in Darfur, particularly for the reason that military has been saying that it desires to retake cities in Darfur … and so they wish to break the RSF’s siege of el-Fasher,” she mentioned.
‘Extraordinarily disturbing’
Turk additionally highlighted “stories of extrajudicial executions in Khartoum state”, which he described as “extraordinarily disturbing”.
He described movies circulating on social media that confirmed at the least 30 males in civilian clothes being rounded up and shot by armed males in RSF uniforms within the al-Salha space within the nation’s second-largest metropolis, Omdurman.
In a subsequent video “an RSF subject commander acknowledged the killings”, he mentioned.
The movies adopted “surprising stories” of the “extrajudicial execution of dozens of individuals accused of collaborating with the RSF in southern Khartoum in current weeks”, which had allegedly been dedicated by the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, a pro-SAF armed insurgent group, in response to Turk.
The battle between SAF, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF’s Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Daglo has divided Sudan in two, with the military holding sway within the north and east, whereas the RSF controls most of Darfur and elements of the south.
Turk mentioned he had alerted each leaders to the “catastrophic human rights penalties” of the battle, saying it was “properly previous time for this battle to cease”.
