UN condemns RSF attacks on civilians in Sudan

The United Nations condemned the “repeated and deliberate” attacks on civilians in Sudan in a statement released on October 12th, as reported by the Moroccan government-friendly North Africa Post.

The attacks occurred in El Fasher, North Darfur, and were allegedly carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group. In a statement released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on October 12th, the series of assaults killed at least 110 people.

Drone strikes occurred between October 10th and 11th in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood; the strikes appeared to target a shelter for internally displaced persons. The city’s last major hospital was also among the targets of the strikes.

In a statement, the OCHA said, “These incidents demand thorough, impartial investigations, and those responsible must be held accountable,” denouncing the strikes “in the strongest possible terms.”

El Fasher is the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state and has been under an RSF-imposed siege since May 2024. It was the location of a drone strike on October 7th, which killed eight people in a maternity ward.

A UN official warned on June 23rd that there was a “very high” risk of genocide occurring in Sudan due to the country’s civil war, as the RSF is accused of carrying out ethnically motivated attacks.

Conditions in the Sudanese region have continued to deteriorate since then, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) revealed on July 10th evidence that war crimes were likely being committed in Darfur.

Describing the conditions in Darfur, Nazhat Shameem Khan, the deputy ICC prosecutor, told the UN Security Council, “People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised, abductions for ransom or to bolster the ranks of armed groups have become common practice, and yet we should not be under any illusion that things can still get worse.”

The city is also experiencing severe food shortages, which led to the deaths from starvation of at least 63 people between August 3rd and August 10th.

Famine in Darfur was first identified in 2024, and the number of children in the region suffering from severe malnutrition has doubled since then.

Darfur was previously the location of a genocide from August 2003 to March 2004, where crimes including rape, torture, murder and forcible transfer were committed.

The perpetrators were the Janjaweed militias, who had been sent by the then-dictator Omar Al-Bashir to repress a civilian-led insurrection against the systematic oppression of ethnic Africans by the Arab Sudanese elites.

The conflict killed an estimated 300,000 people, while a further 2.7 million were displaced; the RSF was born out of the Janjaweed, whose name translates to‘Devils on Horseback’.

North Africa Post, Maghrebi.org