News|Sudan warUN officials condemn ‘horrifying’ mass killings in Sudan as RSF advancesAid workers in the region fear the situation will deteriorate as food and medical supplies dwindle.
United Nations officials have condemned mass killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s el-Fasher and warned the UN Security Council that the city has “descended into an even darker hell”.
United Nations officials have condemned mass killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s el-Fasher and warned the UN Security Council that the city has “descended into an even darker hell”.
The RSF took over el-Fasher , capital of North Darfur state, on Sunday after forcing Sudan’s army to withdraw from its last stronghold in the western Darfur region.
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She said that the UN Human Rights Office has received credible reports of mass killings, summary executions and house-to-house searches as civilians attempted to flee.
“The situation is chaotic. In this context, it is difficult to estimate the number of civilians killed. Despite commitments to protect civilians, the reality is that no one is safe in el-Fasher,” she said. “There is no safe passage for civilians to leave the city.”
Residents in the city were being subjected to “horrors” the United Nations’ humanitarian chief said.
United Nations officials have condemned mass killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s el-Fasher and warned the UN Security Council that the city has “descended into an even darker hell”.
The city was “already the scene of catastrophic levels of human suffering, [but] has descended into an even darker hell,” Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council.
There were “credible reports of widespread executions after Rapid Support Forces fighters entered the city”, Fletcher said.
“We cannot hear the screams, but – as we sit here today – the horror is continuing. Women and girls are being raped, people [are] being mutilated and killed with utter impunity.”
For 18 months before Sudan’s army withdrew from the city, an RSF siege had trapped hundreds of thousands of people inside without food or essentials.
Advertisement More than 36,000 people have fled since Saturday, largely on foot, to Tawila, a town around 70km (43 miles) west that is already sheltering roughly 650,000 displaced people.
“There was a lot of shelling,” Fatima Abdulrahman, a woman displaced from el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera from Tawila. “I myself have been affected by shells. Shelling killed my daughter, injured my other daughter’s eye and paralysed my son. My body is full of wounds and is swollen.”
The fall of el-Fasher to the RSF could herald another split of Sudan, more than a decade after South Sudan’s creation. The latest war started in April 2023, when tension between the military and RSF exploded into fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The ensuing conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million.
“What is happening in the city of el-Fasher is not an isolated incident,” Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed, Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council. “Rather, it is a continuation of a systematic pattern of killing and ethnic cleansing that this militia has carried out since its rebellion in April 2023.”
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Based on reporting by Al Jazeera.
