UN warns of potential ‘ethnically driven’ atrocities in Sudan’s el-Fasher

At least 91 people have been killed in Sudan’s besieged city of el-Fasher in attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over 10 days last month, the United Nations says.

The attacks took place during intensified fighting between the RSF and Sudan’s army around the city, the largest urban centre in the Darfur region that remains under the control of the military and its allies, known as the Joint Forces.

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been under siege for more than a year by the RSF, which launched a renewed offensive on the city in recent weeks, raising fears of potential atrocities.

UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday that the city’s Daraja Oula neighbourhood was repeatedly attacked and subjected to RSF artillery shelling, drone strikes and ground incursions from September 19 to 29.

He called for urgent action to prevent “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities in el-Fasher.”

He said “atrocities are not inevitable”, adding that “they can be averted if all actors take concrete action to uphold international law, demand respect for civilian life and property, and prevent the continued commission of atrocity crimes”.

Since the army recaptured Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, in March, the focus of the fighting has shifted to el-Fasher.

In recent weeks, the RSF has tightened its nearly 500-day siege of the city, one of the longest in modern urban warfare, and has stepped up the tempo and intensity of its attacks, including the frequent use of drones, according to the Sudanese army and residents of the city.

More than 260,000 people are believed to still be trapped in the city without access to sufficient food, water or medical supplies.

“What little food remains is beyond the reach of most. Two kilos [4.4lb] of millet sell for $100, a kilo of sugar or flour for $80 while the average monthly salary, when salaries were still paid, was $70,” Sarra Majdoub, a former UN expert on the country wrote in a recent opinion article for The Guardian.

At least six people were killed and 10 were wounded in artillery and drone attacks on the city on Wednesday, a medical worker in el-Fasher told the AFP news agency.

Last month, at least 78 people were killed in a drone attack on al-Safiyah Mosque during dawn prayers that was blamed on the RSF.

Satellite images and analysis conducted by the Yale Humanitarian Lab, which has been monitoring the Sudan war, indicated that the munition used was likely an RSF suicide drone because there was “no visible ground scarring or crater inside the mosque, indicating that the munition detonated on impact with the mosque roof”.

Civilians inside the city are mostly concentrated in its north near the Sudanese army’s main position but haven’t been able to flee as the RSF surrounds the city.

Last week, the army said it had managed to carry out an airdrop of supplies to its soldiers in the city, a sign of the measures required to work around siege.

“The cruelty of the situation is compounded by continued arbitrary RSF restrictions on bringing food and essential supplies into the city and credible reports of civilians tortured and killed by RSF fighters for doing so,” Turk said.

Civilians who have tried to flee often have to make life-threatening journeys to nearby camps for displaced people because the RSF has almost completely surrounded the city, extending a 68km-long (42-mile-long) berm it has dug at its perimeter.

Human rights organisations have reported violations and killings by the RSF of people who have tried to leave el-Fasher.

Mukesh Kapila, professor of global health and humanitarian affairs at the University of Manchester, told media that the situation in the city was “extremely dire” and residents trapped there were facing “an extremely difficult calculation”.

“The routes out of el-Fasher are very few, and the situation in the surrounding refugee camps, where famine has been declared in some, is not necessarily much better,” he said.