At least 33 people have been killed in Sudan in attacks suspected to have been carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as the brutal two-year war claims its latest victims.
An RSF strike on a prison on Saturday in el-Obeid killed at least 19 people, while on Friday evening, at least 14 members of the same family were killed in an air attack in Darfur, local sources said.
The attacks – part of the RSF’s ongoing war with the military-led government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since 2023 – came after six straight days of the paramilitary group’s drone attacks on the army-led government’s wartime capital of Port Sudan.
These attacks damaged key infrastructure, including a power grid and the country’s last operational civilian airport, which was a key gateway for aid into the war-ravaged nation.
The war has left tens of thousands dead, displaced 13 million people and triggered what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The attack on the prison on Saturday also wounded 45 people, a medical source told the AFP news agency. The source said the jail in the army-controlled city in the North Kordofan state capital was hit by an RSF drone.
The night before, 14 people were killed at the Abu Shouk displacement camp near el-Fasher in Darfur, a rescue group said, blaming the paramilitary.
The camp “was the target of intense bombardment by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday evening”, said the group of volunteer aid workers.
The camp near el-Fasher, the last state capital in Darfur still out of the RSF’s control, is plagued by famine, according to the UN.
It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled the violence of successive conflicts in Darfur and the conflict that has been ripping Africa’s third-largest country asunder since 2023.
The RSF has shelled the camp several times in recent weeks.
Abu Shouk is located near the Zamzam camp, which the RSF seized in April after a devastating offensive that virtually emptied it.
RSF escalation
Elsewhere on Saturday, SAF warplanes struck RSF positions in the Darfur cities of Nyala and el-Geneina, destroying arms depots and military equipment, a military source told AFP.
The RSF has recently said it had taken the strategic town of al-Nahud in West Kordofan, a key army supply line to Darfur.
The RSF’s escalation in Port Sudan earlier this month came after the military struck the Nyala airport in South Darfur, where the RSF receives foreign military assistance, including drones. Local media stated that dozens of RSF officers were killed in the attack.
Sudan’s army-aligned authorities accuse the United Arab Emirates of supplying those drones to the RSF, which has no air force of its own.
The war began as a power struggle between SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. It has effectively divided the country into two, with the army controlling the north, east and centre, while the RSF and its allies dominate nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.
Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.
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