Sudan’s RSF accused of attacking civilians in El-Fasher mosques
On October 29th, Sudan’s military-backed government accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of attacking civilians inside mosques, according to Asharq Al-Aswat.
The alleged attacks took place in the besieged city of El-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur. El-Fasher is a highly strategic city that has been one of the most fiercely contested frontlines in Sudan’s civil war.
The conflict between the military and the RSF has raged on since April 2023 after a power struggle between the two factions turned violent.
The paramilitary group placed El-Fasher under siege in May 2024 to flush out the final remnants of the national military in the vast western region of Darfur after it had captured all other regional state capitals.
On October 26th, the RSF announced that it had seized total control of the city “from the grip of the mercenaries and militias allied with the terrorist army.”
Following the capture of El-Fasher, Yale University researchers, who have been closely monitoring the city since the siege was imposed, reported that satellite images show evidence of “continued mass killing” of residents by RSF combatants.
The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab revealed that the city “appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti Indigenous non-Arab communities.
It said that such crimes were being enacted “through forced displacement and summary execution”, according to The Guardian on October 28th. Since the start of the war, the RSF have been accused of committing genocide by the UN and United States.
Mona Nour Al-Daem, a humanitarian aid officer for the military-backed Sudanese government, stated that “more than 2,000 civilians were killed during the RSF invasion of El-Fasher, targeting volunteers in mosques and the red crescent.”
33,000 residents of El-Fasher have fled the city since its capture, seeking asylum in the town of Tawila 70 kilometres to the west. Tawila is already hosting over 650,000 displaced people.
The United Nations called for safe passage out of El-Fasher for “trapped and terrified” civilians and stressed that assaults on residents and medical facilities “must stop immediately.”
Asharq Al-Aswat, Maghrebi.org, The Guardian
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