In recent days, reports of mass killings and atrocities have been coming from the town of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region. The city has come under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) armed group, which has since unleashed ethnic violence.
Videos shared by local activists show gunmen shooting unarmed civilians. Although the videos have not yet been confirmed by international sources, witnesses and human rights groups say thousands have been killed.
“Clean-up” operations are being carried out in the town, with house-to-house raids targeting the non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti communities. The head of the center said the scale of the violence is comparable to the early days of the Rwandan genocide.
The UN human rights office also confirmed that it is receiving numerous reports of ethnically motivated killings and executions on the spot. The city is completely cut off from communication, and independent information from residents is unavailable.
With the fall of El Fasher, the RSF now controls all five provincial capitals in Darfur, changing the course of the war. The Sudanese army was forced to retreat, leaving the city under RSF control.
More than 260,000 civilians, half of whom are children, are now without aid or food. According to the UN, many are eating animal feed to survive. Humanitarian organizations say hospitals are overwhelmed with the wounded, and it is almost impossible to get aid.
Human rights activists and representatives of Darfurian communities describe these events as the latest stage of the Darfur genocide, which could lead to a new partition of Sudan or the collapse of the country.
The Rapid Support Force (RSF) is expected to be deployed by 2019. The coup was considered part of the Sudanese Armed Forces, but after this, they tried to establish their control over the country by carrying out massacres. RSF forces now control territory in Sudan, mainly in the south and west.
Their actions in Darfur have been considered crimes against humanity by Human Rights Watch and recognized as genocide by the United States.
