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Report Details Mass Killings and Sexual Violence in El Fasher Assault
A human rights organization report released Wednesday documents crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing by the Rapid Support Forces during its seizure of El Fasher. The findings add to earlier accounts of widespread killings and sexual violence in the city.
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A human rights organization report released on Wednesday says the Rapid Support Forces committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during its campaign to seize El Fasher. The report states that many of the crimes, including murder, torture, rape, enslavement and sexual slavery, formed part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians.
The siege and takeover of the city in North Darfur marked one of the bloodiest episodes in Sudan's civil war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces. The report details dozens of accounts from more than 200 survivors. Researchers reviewed 89 open-source videos and analyzed satellite imagery from North Darfur.
Witnesses described mass killings, sexual violence, and the deliberate targeting of children. Arab fighters from the RSF went after members of local non-Arab communities, according to the rights group.
The report says evidence gathered may be relevant to the crime of genocide. It adds to mounting evidence of atrocities in El Fasher, which officials said early last year bore the hallmarks of genocide. More than 6,000 people were killed in just three days of the assault on El Fasher, according to an earlier official report.
The RSF has acknowledged some violations but insists the scale of the atrocities is being exaggerated. The group has not commented on the latest report. Sudan remains locked in a three-year power struggle between the regular army and the RSF paramilitaries.
The ongoing civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than 14 million from their homes. Widespread sexual violence against men, women and children is being used as a weapon of war, officials say. Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces have been accused of atrocities.
After being forced out of the capital, Khartoum, in March last year, the RSF shifted its focus to the Kordofan region and the city of El Fasher. The fighting has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 28 million people facing acute hunger, aid agencies say.
