By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Sudan Today

Back in 2023, we already reported several times on the situation in Sudan. Whereby now again, two days of attacks by the Rapid Support Forces militia Friday and Saturday killed more than 100 people in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

United Nations officials on Saturday announced the RSF and its allied militias attacked refugee camps in Abu Shorouk and Zamzam and North Darfur's capital city of el-Fasher, CBS News reported.

"This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers in Sudan since the onset of this conflict nearly two years ago," Clementine Nkweta-Salami, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, told the media in a prepared statement.

RSF militia and allies attacked Friday and resumed the attack Saturday, which Nkewta-Salami said killed nine aid workers at one of the few health posts in the area.

 

Khartoum faces several insurgent threats, most notably in its Darfur region

The Sudanese military controls el-Fasher and has been engaged in a civil war with its former ally, RSF, for two years. More than 24,000 people died during the civil war.

The Zamzam and Abu Shouk shelters are home to more than 700,000 refugees who were forced to leave their homes in the Darfur region due to the civil war, according to the U.N.

The RSF has attacked civilians living in and near el-Fasher since May 2024 and, in February, attacked the Zamzam camp. Laetitia Bader, Human Rights Watch director for the Horn of Africa, said in an  online report

Bader said the Zamzam camp houses more than 500,000 refugees who have been subjected to famine during the civil war.

"In recent days, hundreds of desperate civilians have arrived in Tawila, a town 60 kilometers west of Zamzam, destitute, hungry and thirsty, reporting that conditions in Zamzam have become unbearable," Bader said.

She said the Sudanese Armed Forces and their allies "claim to be defending the city" but "have not appeared to take all feasible measures ... to minimize harm to civilians."

The camps were attacked on Friday and again on Saturday, Nkweta-Salami said in a statement, and nine aid workers were killed “while operating one of the very few remaining health posts” in Zamzam camp.

Zamzam and Abu Shouk shelter more than 700,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes across Darfur during past bouts of fighting in the region, according to UN figures.

Sudan’s Doctors’ Union said in a statement that six medical workers with the Relief International group were killed when their hospital in Zamzam came under attack on Friday.

They include Mahmoud Babaker Idris, a physician at the hospital, and Adam Babaker Abdallah, head of the group in the region, the union said. It blamed the RSF for “this criminal and barbaric act”.

Relief International confirmed the death of its nine workers, saying they were killed in a “targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region”, including the group’s clinic. The group said the central market in Zamzam and hundreds of makeshift homes in the camp were destroyed in the attack.

Zamzam and Abu Shouk are among five areas in Sudan where famine was detected by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, IPC, a global hunger monitoring group. The war has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with about 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population – facing extreme hunger.

In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have stepped up their attacks on el-Fasher – the only state capital in Darfur still outside their control – after the army recaptured the national capital Khartoum last month.

Amnesty International published a report earlier this month accusing the RSF of subjecting women and girls to “horrific” sexual violence and gang rape, as part of their strategy in the country’s civil war.

 

 

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