‘Brutal attacks’ escalating in Darfur

The UN’s Human Rights Office in Sudan says that ‘brutal attacks’ are escalating in el-Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the city in the western region of Darfur last month, reports Al Jazeera. ‘Over the past 10 days, el-Fasher has witnessed an escalation of brutal attacks. It has become a city of grief,’ Li Fung, the UN’s human rights representative in Sudan, said in a video published on X on Saturday. ‘Civilians who survived 18 months of siege and hostilities are now enduring atrocities of an unimaginable scale,’ she said. ‘Hundreds have been killed, including women, children and the wounded, who sought safety in hospitals and schools. Entire families were cut down as they fled. Others have simply vanished.’ On Friday, Doctors Without Borders reported ‘extremely high levels of malnutrition among children and adults’. Mathilde Vu, the advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Sudan, told AFP that many families arriving in Tawila came with ‘children who are not their own’.

‘That means that they have to come with children who have lost their parents on the way, either because they’ve been disappeared, disappeared in a chaos, or they’ve been detained, or they’ve been killed,’ she said. A report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab on 28 October found ‘apparent pools of blood that were visible in satellite imagery. El-Fasher had a population of approximately 26 000 before the RSF takeover. According to Al Jazeera, the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, said on Friday that civilians still trapped there were being prevented from leaving. ‘I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing within the city,’ he added. After two years of war, there appears to be no sign of de-escalation, despite a truce proposal put forward by the Quad, a group comprising international mediators – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US.

Meanwhile, Sudanese ambassador to South Africa, Osman Abufatima Adam Mohammed, has accused the international community of turning a blind eye to the civil war in his home country reports News24. Speaking at a National Press Club event in Pretoria on Friday, Mohammed condemned the lack of decisive global action. He alleged that the UAE has been instrumental in supporting the RSF, a militia he blames for orchestrating a ‘genocidal campaign’ against the Sudanese people. ‘There has been no effort to pressure the UAE or hold it to account for enabling RSF militia to do this genocidal campaign against the people of Sudan. The UAE has used every possible means to buy the world’s silence. The audacity of the Emirati is such that their wealth allows them to evade justice.’ Mohammed said the war had laid bare the weakness of the current international system, which was ‘increasingly becoming a network of narrow interests, indifferent to the murders of civilians and to the systematic destruction of nations, and turns a blind eye on the more serious crimes’. In the wake of the recent attacks in el-Fasher, Mohammed said it seemed like the global conscience was awakening. On Thursday, Reuters reported that the RSF had agreed to a proposal from the US and Arab powers for a humanitarian ceasefire and was open to talks on a cessation of hostilities, it said in a statement. US President Donald Trump’s administration has said it was working towards ending fighting in Sudan. Last month, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation Minister’s spokesperson, Chrispin Phiri, in a statement, condemned the abhorrent attacks deliberately targeting civilians and essential civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court said they are taking steps to preserve evidence from Sudan's Darfur region of possible war crimes carried out by a paramilitary force after it seized a key government stronghold and reportedly killed hundreds of people, reports ABC News. The court ‘is taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions,’ the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The alleged atrocities ‘are part of a broader pattern of violence that has afflicted the entire Darfur region’ and they ‘may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,’ the statement said. Last week, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the key city of El-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months. Witnesses have reported fighters going house to house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults. According to the World Health Organisation, groups of gunmen killed at least 460 people at a hospital and abducted doctors and nurses. The court’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both government forces and the RSF, may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur. Earlier this month, the court convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur for the first time, after looking into atrocities in the area for more than two decades. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman was found guilty of ordering mass executions and bludgeoning two prisoners to death with an axe.