Khartoum [Sudan], October 12: At least 53 people, including 14 children and 15 women, were killed when Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces attacked a displacement shelter in the besieged city of El Fasher in North Darfur state, according to a Sudanese medical advocacy group.
The Sudan Doctors' Network said on Saturday that the RSF, which has been at war with the Sudanese army, attacked the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre at the Omdurman Islamic University.
The shelling and drone attack late on Friday wounded another 21 people, including five children and seven women, said the Sudan Doctors' Network, a group of medical professionals tracking the Sudanese civil war. Most of the wounded suffered serious injuries, it said.
The El Fasher Resistance Committee, a local activists organisation, said at least 60 people were killed in what it called a "massacre".
"Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned," said the committee, as it called for an international intervention. "The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent." The attack represents the latest in an intensifying pattern of strikes on civilian areas in the city, with the brutal civil war now well into its third year. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented at least 53 civilians killed between October 5-8 alone in attacks across el-Fasher locality, with women and children among the dead.
El-Fasher is the last major city held by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the vast western Darfur region, and has faced intensified attacks from the paramilitary RSF since the army recaptured the capital, Khartoum, in March this year.
Advertisement The RSF has been fighting SAF for control of the country since April 2023, when two generals leading both forces fell out. The war has triggered what humanitarian organisations have said is the world's largest humanitarian emergency.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions have been externally and internally displaced due to the fighting.
Approximately 260,000 people remain trapped inside, but el-Fasher's overall population has now shrunk by 62 percent from its pre-war level of 1.11 million to just 413,454 people, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Source: Qatar Tribune
