Dozens of civilians have been killed and thousands displaced in Sudan’s Gezira state after days of attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that has been fighting the army for more than a year. Aid organizations have announced that.
The Associated Press reported on Saturday that doctors’ unions and youth groups said the RSF had attacked several villages and towns in the east-central Gezira region, looted and destroyed public and private property, and killed dozens of people. announced.
Al Jazeera confirmed that the RSF attack on the village of Al Shireha in Gezira province lasted three days, killing 50 people in one day alone, according to aid groups that track and publish lists of the dead.
Activist networks in the region told AFP news agency that at least 50 people were killed in Friday’s attack, and the website Sudan News (Sudanahbar) said as many as 124 people were killed and 200 injured. It was reported.
Fighting broke out on April 15, 2023, as a result of a power struggle between the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedi” Dagalo, and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Since then, the conflict has displaced more than 10 million people, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to UN data.
Since September, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been carrying out a major offensive to retake the capital Khartoum and surrounding areas from RSF control.
Amgad Farid, a Sudanese politician and executive director of the Sudanese think tank Fikra for Research and Development, said the attack was linked to the recent defection of an RSF commander.
He reminded that Abuagra Keikal, a former army officer who became the top RSF commander in the southeastern province of Gezira, switched sides in the war on October 20.
“Since then, the RSF has launched waves of attacks against the eastern Gezira and al-Butana regions, where Abu Agra is from,” he told Al Jazeera from the Egyptian capital Cairo.
Farid added that Abuagra himself has been accused of committing crimes against the Gezira people.
The Resistance Committee, a network of youth groups that tracks the war, told The Associated Press late Friday that RSF fighters had killed at least 50 people and wounded 200 in al-Sireh alone.
At least 12 other people were killed in Sakuya village, the group said.
It announced casualty figures to AFP on Saturday, adding that rescue workers and villagers have been unable to evacuate the wounded “due to bombing and sniper fire” from the RSF since the attack on Friday morning.
The Sudanese doctors’ union said the RSF advance had turned the eastern region of Gezira into a “brutal war zone”.
“The Forgotten Crisis”
Ted Chaiban, deputy director of UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, called for increased international attention to Sudan’s “forgotten crisis”.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Chaiban said the war has caused “one of the most serious crises in living memory,” forcing more than 14 million people to flee their homes and making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis. He said that
“We’ve never seen numbers like this in our generation,” he says.
Approximately 25.6 million people, more than half of Sudan’s population, are expected to face severe hunger this year due to conflict.
UNICEF and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are calling for smoother access to people in need across the country.
The war has been characterized by atrocities such as mass rape and “ethnic cleansing,” particularly in the western region of Darfur, which has faced a heavy onslaught by the RSF, which the United Nations said amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. .
