GENEVA: The UN’s independent fact-finding mission on Sudan said on Thursday the siege and capture of El Fasher by a paramilitary group bore “the hallmarks of genocide”.
Its investigation concluded that the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) seizure of the city in Darfur last October had inflicted “three days of absolute horror”, and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
It comes the same week as drone strikes reportedly killed dozens across Sudan’s Kordofan region, where the UN has regularly warned of similar atrocities unfolding.
At least 15 children were killed in a drone strike on a displacement camp in West Kordofan this week, Unicef said, while local rights defenders said another strike on a market killed 28 people in North Kordofan.
The West Kordofan strike has been blamed on the Sudanese army, while the RSF has been accused over the North Kordofan attack.
The mission warned that “urgent protection of civilians is needed, now more than ever,” in Kordofan, the flashpoint of fighting since the RSF’s capture of El Fasher, which was marked by ethnic massacres, sexual violence and detention.
“The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around El Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said the mission’s chairman Mohamad Chande Othman.
“They formed part of a planned and organised operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.”
Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary RSF has killed tens of thousands, and forced 11 million people to flee their homes. It has triggered what the UN calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The UN Human Rights Council established the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan in October 2023, to begin gathering evidence of violations.
Its investigation into the takeover of El Fasher, following an 18-month siege, concluded that thousands of people, particularly from the Zaghawa ethnic group, “were killed, or disappeared”.
The Zaghawa is one of the area’s largest non-Arab ethnic groups.
Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who has been widely accused of funnelling support to the RSF on behalf of their patrons, is also Zaghawa, which has led to tension in Deby’s camp across the border. — AFP
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