CAIRO (AP) — At least 53 people, including 14 children and 15 women, were killed in an attack by Sudanese paramilitaries that hit a shelter in a besieged Darfur city, a doctors’ group said Saturday.
The shelling attack late Friday by the Rapid Support Forces on the city of el-Fasher also wounded another 21 people, including five children and seven women, said the Sudan Doctors’ Network, a group of medical professionals tracking the Sudanese civil war.
The attack by the Rapid Support Forces hit the al-Arqam Home, which sheltered displaced families in el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, the group said. The shelter is located at the Omdurman Islamic University.
“This massacre represents a continuation of the scorched-earth policy practiced by the Rapid Support Forces against civilians, in flagrant violation of all international norms and laws,” the medical group said.
The RSF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The strike late Friday was the latest deadly attack on el-Fasher which has been for months the epicenter of the war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitaries.
The city has been under siege for over a year. The U.N. and other aid groups warn that 260,000 civilians remain trapped in the city after most of its population fled RSF attacks on the city and its surroundings.
The RSF has been trying for over the year to seize control of el-Fasher, the Sudanese military’s last stronghold in Darfur. The paramilitaries have bombed the city. They imposed a total blockade in July around its hundreds of thousands of people.
Sudan plunged into chaos when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into in Khartoum and elsewhere.
The fighting has turned into a full-fledged civil war that killed tens of thousands of people, displaced over 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into
has been marked by atrocities including mass killings and rape, which the International Criminal Court is investigating as
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