At least 30 civilians and 17 soldiers were killed as the RSF advanced increasingly towards the capital of North Darfur, the governor says.
Dozens of civilians and soldiers were killed in the latest bout of violence in the Sudanese town of el-Fasher on Friday, the local governor said, as fighting in the country shows no signs of abating more than a year after the conflict began. .
At least 30 civilians and 17 soldiers were killed in attacks in the city, Minni Minnawi said on Saturday. “This shows that the objective of those attacking el-Fasher is to exterminate the city.”
The war in Sudan erupted in mid-April last year when a simmering dispute between the leaders of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into violence.
The fighting has killed thousands of people, displaced almost 9 million and led to imminent famine and a serious humanitarian crisis. Although the war began in the capital Khartoum, it spread to Darfur and triggered ethnic violence, resurfacing old rivalries that date back to a brutal war in the early 2000s.
El-Fasher is the last domino that has not yet fallen in Darfur, as the RSF has taken control of almost all major cities in the western state of Sudan.
The RSF’s steady gains on the ground led Darfur’s former rebel leaders, Minnawi and Jibril Ibrahim, to break months of neutrality and declare, in November last year, their intention to join the war on the side of the SAF. The RSF emerged from what rebel groups call the “Janjaweed,” an Arab force that killed thousands of non-Arabs in Darfur during the region’s war, which began in 2003 and ended with a peace agreement in 2020.
Since Minnawi and Ibrahim’s announcement, the Sudanese army has maintained a presence in the city, making it the last stronghold of the forces fighting the RSF.
“O [civilian] The coordination of the Democratic Civil Forces and the groups that sponsor and finance it are patiently awaiting the fall of el-Fashir to declare the birth of their racial militia state on the skulls of the children of Darfur in western Sudan,” Minnawi said referring to to a civilian group accused of siding with the RSF.
Thousands of civilians are trapped because of the fighting. Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, said the fall of el-Fashir could lead to large-scale brutality against civilians and that a famine is already occurring in Darfur.
“El-Fashir is significant for a number of reasons,” added De Waal. “It is the last stronghold of the internationally recognized government… in Darfur. It is also a place where other armed groups allied with the government… are hiding.
“So if it fell into the hands of the RSF, not only would we see the kind of violence and massive looting that we have seen elsewhere, but we would probably also [a] large-scale massacre of civilians.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
