CAIRO — More than 6,000 people were killed in over three days when a Sudanese paramilitary group unleashed “a wave of intense violence … shocking in its scale and brutality” in Sudan’s Darfur region in late October, according to the United Nations.
The Rapid Support Forces’ offensive to capture the city of El Fasher included widespread atrocities that amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a report released Friday.
“The wanton violations that were perpetrated by the RSF and allied Arab militia in the final offensive on El Fasher underscore that persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
The RSF and their allied Arab militias, known as janjaweed, overran El Fasher, the Sudanese army’s only remaining stronghold in Darfur, on Oct. 26 and rampaged through the city and its surroundings after more than 18 months of siege.
The 29-page U.N. report detailed a set of atrocities that included mass killings and summary executions, sexual violence, abductions for ransom, torture and other ill treatment, as well as detentions and disappearances. In many cases, the attacks were ethnicity-motivated, it said.
The RSF did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The group’s leader, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously acknowledged abuses by his fighters but disputed the scale of atrocities.
‘Out of a horror movie’
The alleged atrocities in El Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, mirror a pattern of RSF conduct in its war against the Sudanese military. The war began in April 2023 when a power struggle between the two sides exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country.
The conflict created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with parts of the country pushed into famine. It has also been marked by atrocities that the International Criminal Court said it was investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Biden administration had accused the RSF of carrying out genocide during the war.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said it documented the killing of at least 4,400 people in El Fasher between Oct. 25 and Oct. 27, while more than 1,600 others were killed as they were trying to flee the RSF rampage. The report said it drew its toll from interviews with 140 victims and witnesses, which “are consistent with independent analysis of contemporaneous satellite imagery and video footage.”
In one case, RSF fighters opened fire with heavy weapons on a crowd of 1,000 people sheltering in the Rashid dormitory at the University of El Fasher on Oct. 26, killing around 500 people, the report said. One witness was quoted as saying he saw bodies thrown into the air, “like a scene out of a horror movie.”
In another case, around 600 people, including 50 children, were executed Oct. 26 while taking shelter in the university facilities, the report said.
The report warned that the scale of the death toll of the weeklong offensive in El Fasher was “undoubtedly significantly higher.”
The toll does not include at least 460 people who were killed by the RSF on Oct. 28 when they stormed the Saudi Maternity Hospital, according to the World Health Organization.
Around 300 people were also killed in RSF shelling and drone attacks between Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 in the Abu Shouk camp for displaced people, about a mile and a half northwest of El Fasher, the U.N. Human Rights Office’s report said.
Sexual violence
Sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, was apparently widespread during El Fasher offensive, with RSF fighters and their allied militias targeting women and girls from the African Zaghawa, non-Arab tribes over allegations of having links or supporting the military, the report said.
Turk, who visited Sudan last month, said survivors of sexual violence recounted testimonies that showed how the practice “was systematically used as a weapon of war.”
The paramilitaries also abducted many people while attempting to flee the city, before releasing them after paying ransom. Thousands have been held in at least 10 detention centers — including the city’s Children’s Hospital, which was turned into a detention facility — run by the RSF in El Fasher, the report said.
Several thousand people remain missing and unaccounted for, the report said.
The RSF offensive on El Fasher was similar to other attacks by the paramilitary group and its allies on the Zamzam camp for displaced people, nine miles south of the city, and on West Darfur’s city of Geneina and the nearby town of Ardamata in 2023, the U.N. Human Rights Office said.
Turk said there were “reasonable grounds” that the RSF and its allied Arab militias committed war crimes and that their acts also amount to crimes against humanity.
He called for holding accountable those responsible, including commanders, warning that “persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence.”
Magdy writes for the Associated Press.
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