The United Nations (UN) human rights chief warned on Friday that the war in Sudan is becoming “more dangerous” for civilians, following reports from rights groups of army-allied militias carrying out ethnic-based attacks on minorities in Al-Jazira state.
The “Sudan conflict (is) taking more dangerous turn for civilians,” UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk said on social media platform X, adding that “there is evidence of war crimes and other atrocity crimes.”
The Sudanese army, at war with rival paramilitaries since April 2023, led an offensive this week on Al-Jazira state, recapturing its capital Wad Madani from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Rights groups said on Monday that at least 13 people including two children were killed in ethnically-targeted attacks against minority communities in the agricultural state.
At a briefing on Friday, Shamdasani described the reports as “very worrying,” adding that “they do require further investigation.”
She said what the UN has documented is “the use of extremely heavy weaponry in populated areas,” including air strikes on marketplaces.
Responding to recent reports from US officials of the Sudanese army using chemical weapons in Sudan, spokesperson of the UN human rights chief Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday that due to limited access, the UN “has not specifically documented” such practices during the war.
Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.
Though the RSF has become notorious for alleged ethnic-based violence, reports have also emerged of civilians being targeted on the basis of ethnicity in army-controlled areas.
On Thursday, the US treasury department announced sanctions against army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.
It came a week after the US also slapped sanctions on RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing his group of committing genocide.
Sudan’s foreign ministry rejected as “immoral,” the US sanctions, saying that they “lack the most basic foundations of justice and transparency.”
In a statement, it said the sanctions “express only confusion and a weak sense of justice,” after 21 months of war, in which the foreign ministry said Burhan was “defending the Sudanese people against a genocidal plot.”
Agencies
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