ROGUE paramilitary forces in Sudan accused of mass slaughtering civilians in El Fasher are feared to be committing fresh atrocities.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023, has now escalated its brutal military assault in the Kordofan region as it appears to be preparing for an offensive to seize its capital El-Obeid.
Less than two weeks ago, the RSF captured the city of El-Fasher, the army’s last major stronghold in Darfur.
El-Fasher’s fall was accompanied by reports of mass killings, sexual violence and looting, drawing international condemnation.
In just 48 hours, more than 2,000 civilians were “executed and killed”, according to the Sudanese army’s Joint Forces.
Videos shared online show RSF fighters gunning down captives at point-blank range.
In one, a child soldier shoots a man in cold blood, and another shows rebels pretending to release prisoners before executing them.
At least five separate clusters of bodies appear around the city’s perimeter, where witnesses say civilians were shot trying to flee.
There are fears of further atrocities taking place as the conflict shifts into the oil-rich Kordofan region.
The UN has now warned that the brutal tactics are now being repeated in the region hundreds of miles to the east.
The Sudan Doctors Network, a prominent medical group, said that “dozens of bodies” were piled up in houses in Bara, a town in North Kordofan that fell to the RSF late last month.
The RSF, largely drawn from Arab militias once known as the Janjaweed, stands accused of repeating the genocidal tactics it unleashed in Darfur 20 years ago.
The group has been fighting Sudan’s army since April 2023, when a power struggle between Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) exploded into full-scale civil war.
Since then, 14 million people have been displaced and up to 150,000 killed, according to humanitarian agencies.
The UN calls it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Before El Fasher fell, the city had been under siege for 18 months. Over 260,000 civilians, half of them children, were trapped without food or medicine. Many were eating animal fodder to survive.
Now, the RSF controls every Darfur state capital, effectively partitioning Sudan.
Analysts say the army’s withdrawal marks a turning point — and perhaps the death of a united Sudan.
And now advance into Kordofan will bring the RSF closer to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.
Various human rights groups have voiced their concerns over what they say is a “systematic and intentional process” of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution.
On Thursday, the RSF said it had agreed to a truce proposal put forward by the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
But the UN warned the following day of “clear preparations for intensified hostilities” in Sudan, “with everything that implies for its long-suffering people”.
“There is no sign of de-escalation,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
“Developments on the ground indicate clear preparations for intensified hostilities, with everything that implies for its long-suffering people.”
The conflict, which erupted in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and triggered a hunger crisis.
Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities.
Shocking images taken after the fall of El Fasher in Sudan show vast patches of red-stained sand and clusters of bodies, marking a massacre so large it is visible from space.
The fall of the city gave the RSF control of all five state capitals in the vast western region, in addition to parts of the south.
The army controls most of Sudan’s north, east and centre.
The fighting has spread across Darfur and to the neighbouring Kordofan region, with both emerging as the epicentre of Sudan’s war over the past months.
Early this week, a drone attack in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan province, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens more.
In South Kordofan, a medical source said that the RSF shelled a hospital in besieged Dilling the day before, killing five and injuring five more.
The Sudan Doctors’ Union said the attack also destroyed the facility’s radiology department.
Dilling, under RSF siege since June 2023, lies about 90 miles southwest of El-Obeid, a key crossroads linking Darfur to Khartoum.
The army broke a two-year siege of El-Obeid in February, but the RSF has regrouped and is mounting a fresh push to seize Sudan’s central corridor.
A resident of the city said that people “are living in fear” and “ready to leave at any moment”.
Last month, the RSF captured Bara, north of El-Obeid, forcing more than 36,000 people to flee that town and four others in North Kordofan in less than a week, according to the UN.
Much of the wider Kordofan region now faces a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said Dilling is now at risk of famine, while South Kordofan’s capital, Kadugli, is already facing one.
According to the United Nations, about 70,000 people have fled El-Fasher to nearby towns, including Tawila, while the city had previously housed some 260,000.
“Our main concern is that though we have seen approximately 5,000 people coming out of El-Fasher towards Tawila, we don’t know where the other hundreds of thousands have gone,” newly elected MSF president Javid Abdelmoneim said.
