More than sixty people were killed in a drone attack on a refugee camp in western Sudan on Saturday. The attack took place in Al-Fashir, a city in the Darfur region. According to a local aid group, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are behind the attack.
The group, which coordinates relief efforts and documents abuses, said women, children and the elderly were “completely burned” by the attacks. The international community has been called on by the group to intervene.
RSF attacks force civilians in Al-Fashir to spend large parts of the day underground, in small makeshift shelters that they have dug themselves.
‘Ethnic cleansing’
A civil war has been raging in Sudan between the RSF and the government army for more than two years. The war has already cost the lives of tens of thousands of people and millions of Sudanese have fled. The UN has labeled the war as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”
Al-Fashir is the last major city in the Darfur region not in the hands of RSF. The approximately eight hundred thousand inhabitants have been surrounded by the RSF since May 2024. In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have taken over much territory in Al-Fashir and pushed back the government army. Aid convoys carrying food and medical supplies to the area have been shot at several times.
Doctors Without Borders spoke a report this summer of an “ethnically motivated and genocidal” siege. The non-Arab community of Zaghawa in particular is explicitly targeted by RSF, RSF fighters have said in the past. “We will clear Al-Fashir from the Zaghawa, as we did with the Masalit.” In 2023, the Masalit community in West Darfur was brutally abused, abused and murdered.
Also read
Millions suffer from war, displacement, hunger, lack of care – but ‘Sudan hardly gets any attention’
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