Horror as ‘2000 killed in just 48 hours’ as slaughtering militia goes ‘house to house’ | World | News
Horrific reports of ethically motivated mass killings and other atrocities are emerging from Sudan after paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of El Fasher in the country’s western Darfur region over the weekend. Now the Sudanese army has claimed that more than 2,000 civilians were brutally murdered by these paramilitary forces in just 48 hours.
RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army for more than two years, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the displacement of nearly 12 million people. Al-Fasher fell to the RSF after more than 18 months of siege warfare. This means the group now maintains control of all state capitals in the Darfur region. Horrific videos posted by local activists show a fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas shooting at point-blank range a group of unarmed civilians sitting on the ground. Other unverified footage shared by pro-democracy activists showed dozens of people lying dead on the ground next to burnt vehicles.
The Joint Forces, a military group fighting alongside the army, said in a statement on Tuesday (October 28) that the RSF “committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of Al-Fasher.”
It was claimed that more than 2,000 unarmed citizens, mostly “women, children and the elderly”, were “executed and killed” on 26 and 27 October.
Aid workers and doctors reported scenes of carnage and panic reminiscent of the fall of El-Geneina in West Darfur in 2023, killing nearly 15,000 people. Times reported.
Various human rights groups, including Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory, have expressed concern about what they say is a “systematic and deliberate process” of ethnic cleansing of indigenous non-Arab communities in Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti through forced displacement and extrajudicial killings. The Yale lab, which tracked the war using open source intelligence and satellite imagery, said it found evidence consistent with mass killings by RSF.
This included what appeared to be “door-to-door clearance operations” in the city, it said.
Also on Tuesday, the EU said it was “deeply concerned” by the intensifying violence in Al-Fasher and called on “all warring parties to de-escalate tensions”.
“We are closely monitoring the situation with our partners and ensuring that all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law are documented,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Anouar El Anouni said. he said. “There can be no impunity”.
The siege warfare in Al-Fasher became so extreme that the UN has deemed it among the world’s worst humanitarian crises; An official famine was declared in the displacement camps outside the city, and people there turned to animal fodder for food. The UN had warned before the city fell that 260,000 people, half of them children, were trapped there without help.
