More than 30 killed in latest attack in Sudan’s Darfur region: Monitor

Residential buildings among structures targeted in paramilitary attack on city of el-Fasher, activists say.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have again attacked el-Fasher city in the western Darfur region of Sudan, killing more than 30 people, an activist group has said.

The attack by the RSF and allied militias is the latest deadly offensive on the area, the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the war-torn region.

The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher said dozens of other people were wounded in the Sunday attack, which involved “heavy artillery shelling”. The RSF renewed the assault on Monday, shelling residential buildings and open markets, according to the activist group, which tracks the war.

No new casualties were immediately reported. The RSF did not immediately respond to the claims.

For over a year, the RSF has sought to wrest control of el-Fasher, located more than 800km (500 miles) southwest of the capital, Khartoum, from the SAF, launching regular attacks on the city and two major famine-hit camps for displaced people on its outskirts.

However, observers say attacks have intensified in recent months as the RSF suffered battlefield setbacks in Khartoum and other urban areas in the county’s east and centre.

El-Fasher is estimated to be home to more than one million people, including hundreds of thousands of those displaced by the fighting.

The latest violence comes less than a week after a two-day attack by the RSF and its allied militias on e-Fasher, as well as the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps for internally displaced people, killed more than 400 people, according to the United Nations.

He said he had spoken by phone with both SAF general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF second in command general Abdelrahim Dagalo, who committed to giving “full access to get aid in”.

International aid agencies have long warned that a full-scale RSF assault on el-Fasher could lead to devastating urban warfare and a new wave of mass displacement.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has described the situation as “hell on earth” for at least 825,000 children trapped in and around el-Fasher.

The UN also warned of a catastrophic humanitarian situation.

Aid ‘dangerously restricted’

“The humanitarian community in Sudan is facing critical and intensifying operational challenges in North Darfur,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for aid airdrops into the city in the face of access restrictions.

Sudan’s brutal civil war began on April 15, 2023, after a tenuous power-sharing agreement between SAF General al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, fell apart.

To date, more than 24,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the UN, although activists say the number is likely far higher.

Millions more have been displaced.