RSF

Paramilitary says it will accept a ceasefire proposed by the Quad mediators – the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) says it has agreed to a proposal by the United States for a ceasefire in Sudan after more than two years of fighting with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

The paramilitary group said in a statement on Thursday that it would accept a “humanitarian ceasefire” proposed by the US-led “quad” mediator group, which includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, “to address the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the war and to enhance the protection of civilians”.

There was no immediate comment from Sudan’s military.

Earlier this week, the US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, said efforts were under way to reach a truce and that the warring sides had “agreed in principle”.

“We have not recorded any initial objection from either side. We are now focusing on the fine details,” Boulos said on Monday in a statement carried by the Sudan Tribune news outlet.

Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said the plan would begin with a three-month humanitarian truce that could pave the way for a lasting political solution, which would include a new civilian government.

The RSF “said that they’re eager to find some kind of end to this two-year conflict”, Morgan said of the group’s agreement to the truce.

SAF has repeatedly said it wants to continue fighting, Morgan reported, adding that army officials do not believe members of the RSF can be reintegrated into Sudanese society.

SAF has previously said it does not want the UAE’s involvement in truce discussions and that it will demand the RSF withdraw from any city it occupies, among other stipulations, she said.

“This humanitarian access the ceasefire would bring about is desperately needed, but the Sudanese army is yet to agree to it. They have conditions,” Morgan reported. “It doesn’t look like the RSF will meet them.”

Earlier on Thursday, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had said his forces were “striving for the defeat of the enemy”.

“Soon, we will avenge those who have been killed and abused … in all the regions attacked by the rebels,” he said in a televised address.

The announcement comes as the RSF faces accusations of committing mass killings since it seized the city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state on October 26, following an 18-month siege.

The RSF now dominates the vast western Darfur region and parts of the country’s south, while the army holds the north, east and central regions along the Nile and the Red Sea.

More than 70,000 people have fled el-Fasher and surrounding areas since the RSF’s takeover, according to the United Nations, with witnesses and human rights groups reporting cases of “summary executions”, sexual violence and mass killings of civilians.

The World Health Organization had reported the “tragic killing of more than 460 patients and medical staff” at a former children’s hospital during the city’s takeover.

‘Mass graves’

Researchers at Yale University said in a report on Thursday that new satellite imagery has detected activity “consistent with mass graves” in the city.

The US university’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) report said it found evidence consistent with “body disposal activities”.

The report identified “at least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves at a mosque and the former Children’s Hospital”.

It also noted the appearance of metres-long trenches, as well as the disappearance of clusters of objects consistent with bodies near the hospital, the mosque and other parts of the city – indicating that bodies deposited around those areas were later moved.

“Body disposal or removal was also observed at Al-Saudi Hospital in satellite imagery,” the report said.

The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has pitted the army against the group led by al-Burhan’s former deputy, RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti.

Both the warring sides have been accused of war crimes. In a September report, the UN Human Rights Council accused both sides of extrajudicial killing, large-scale attacks against civilians and torture. It also reported an “overwhelming volume” of evidence on sexual violence primarily perpetrated by RSF and SAF members.

The Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are collecting bodies after the deadly takeover of North Darfur capital, US researcher says.

A researcher at Yale University in the United States says the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are digging mass graves in el-Fasher, the city in Sudan’s western Darfur region that has seen mass killings and displacement since the RSF took over last month.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the RSF “have begun to dig mass graves and to collect bodies throughout the city”.

“They are cleaning up the massacre,” Raymond said.

The RSF seized control of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, on October 26, after the withdrawal of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has been fighting the paramilitary group for control of Sudan since April 2023.

More than 70,000 people have fled the city and surrounding areas since the RSF’s takeover, according to the United Nations, while witnesses and human rights groups have reported cases of “summary executions”, sexual violence and massacres of civilians.

A report from Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab on October 28 also found evidence of “mass killings” since the RSF took control of el-Fasher, including apparent pools of blood that were visible in satellite imagery.

UN officials also warned this week that thousands of people are believed to be trapped in el-Fasher.

“The current insecurity continues to block access, preventing the delivery of life-saving assistance to those trapped in the city without food, water and medical care,” Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet, a senior UN refugee agency (UNHCR) official in Sudan, said.

Sudanese journalist Abdallah Hussain explained that, before the RSF’s full takeover, el-Fasher was already reeling from an 18-month siege imposed by the paramilitary group.

“No aid was allowed to access the city, and no healthcare facilities [were] operating,” Hussain told Al Jazeera from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday. “Now it’s getting even worse for the citizens who remain trapped.”

Amid global condemnation, the RSF and its supporters have tried to downplay the atrocities committed in el-Fasher, accusing allied armed groups of being responsible.

The RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, has also promised an investigation.

But Raymond at the Humanitarian Research Lab said: “if they want to actually have an investigation, then they need to withdraw from the city [and] let UN personnel and the Red Cross and humanitarians enter … and go house-to-house looking to see who’s still alive”.

“At this point, we can’t let the RSF investigate themselves,” he said.

Raymond added that, based on UN figures and what can be seen on the ground in el-Fasher, “more people could have died [in 10 days]… than have died in the past two years of the war in Gaza”.

“That’s what we’re talking about. That’s not hyperbole,” he told Al Jazeera, stressing that thousands of people need emergency assistance.

More than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

A senior Sudanese diplomat has accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing war crimes in the country’s North Darfur state, as survivors who escaped the city of el-Fasher recounted mass killings and sexual assault by the paramilitary troops.

Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, made the allegations on Sunday as he accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of helping the RSF paramilitary group in the ongoing civil war.

The Gulf state denies the claim.

Adawi’s remarks followed an earlier statement by Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris, who told the Swiss newspaper Blick that the RSF should be tried in the international courts.

But Kamil rejected the “illegal” idea of foreign troops being deployed to his country, which has been ravaged by a civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The calls for action come a week after the RSF seized the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, after an 18-month siege and starvation campaign, resulting in thousands of reported civilian deaths. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

In the days since its capture, survivors have reported mass executions, pillaging, rape and other atrocities, sparking an international outcry.

The Sudanese government said that at least 2,000 people were killed, but witnesses said the real number could be much higher.

Tens of thousands of civilians are still believed to be trapped in the city.

“The government of Sudan is calling on the international community to act immediately and effectively rather than just make statements of condemnation,” Adawi told reporters during a news conference in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The envoy urged the world to designate the RSF as a “terrorist” organisation, as well as condemn RSF “for committing massacres amounting to genocide” and denounce “its official regional financier and supporter, the United Arab Emirates”.

He also said that Sudan would not take part in talks led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the UAE to end the conflict if the latter remains part of the negotiations.

“We do not consider them [the UAE] as a mediator and someone reliable on the issue,” Adawi stressed.

Mass killings, sexual assault

The UAE, however, denies allegations that it is supplying the RSF with weapons.

At a forum in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, an Emirati presidential adviser said that the Gulf state wants to help end the war, and acknowledged that regional and international powers could have done more to prevent the conflict in Sudan.

“We all made the mistake, when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrow the civilian government. That was, in my opinion, looking back, a critical mistake,” Anwar Gargash said.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US, as mediators, have all condemned the mass killings and called for increased humanitarian assistance.

As the world’s worst humanitarian crisis further spirals into chaos, residents who managed to escape el-Fasher recalled their harrowing experience.

Adam Yahya, who fled with four of his children, told Al Jazeera that his wife was killed in an RSF drone strike shortly before el-Fasher fell. He said that he and his children barely had time to mourn before they found themselves on the run from the paramilitary group.

“The streets were full of dead people. We made it to one of the sand barriers set up by the RSF. They were shooting at people, men, women and children, with machineguns. I heard one saying, ‘Kill them all, leave no one alive’,” Yahya recounted.

“We ran back and hid. At night, I slowly crept out with my children and crossed the barrier. We walked to a village, where someone took pity on us and gave us a ride to the camp here.”

Another 45-year-old woman in the displacement camp of Al Dabbah in Sudan’s Northern State told Al Jazeera that RSF fighters sexually assaulted her.

The woman, who only gave her first name, Rasha, said she left her daughters at home when the RSF seized the army headquarters on Sunday and went to look for her sons.

“The RSF asked me where I was going, and I told them I’m looking for my sons. They forced me into a house and started sexually assaulting me. I told them I’m old enough to be their mother. I cried,” she said.

“They then let me go, and I took my daughters and fled, leaving my sons behind. I don’t know where they are now,” she said.

“We just fled and ran past dead bodies till we crossed the barrier and reached a small village outside el-Fasher,” she added.

Aid agencies, meanwhile, said that thousands of people are unaccounted for after fleeing el-Fasher.

Caroline Bouvard, the Sudan country director for Solidarites International, said that only a few hundred more people have turned up in Tawila, the closest town to el-Fasher, in the past few days.

“Those are very small numbers considering the number of people who were stuck in el-Fasher. We keep hearing feedback that people are stuck on the roads and in different villages that are unfortunately still inaccessible due to security reasons,” she said.

Bouvard said there is a “complete blackout” in terms of information coming out of el-Fasher after the RSF takeover, and that aid agencies are getting their information from surrounding areas, where up to 15,000 people are believed to be stuck.

“There’s a strong request for advocacy with the different parties to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach these people or that, at least, we can send in trucks to bring them back to Tawila,” she added.

Many people remain unaccounted for while camps and towns surrounding el-Fasher are overwhelmed too.

Millions of people across war-ravaged Sudan, particularly its western parts, remain in dire need of humanitarian aid as key generals show no intention of ending the civil war amid ongoing violence and killings in North Darfur’s el-Fasher.

International aid agencies called on Sunday on the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to facilitate increased entry of aid while a roadmap by mediators has failed to produce a ceasefire so far.

A week after the paramilitary force seized el-Fasher, the state capital of North Darfur, after an 18-month siege and starvation campaign, the situation remains catastrophic.

Tens of thousands of civilians are still believed to be trapped in the final major city in the western region of Darfur to fall to the RSF while thousands more are unaccounted for after fleeing el-Fasher.

Only a fraction of those who fled on foot from el-Fasher have made it to Tawila, a town roughly 50km (30 miles) away.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Tawila, an official with a France-based aid agency said only a few hundred more people have turned up in the town over the past few days.

“Those are very small numbers considering the number of people who were stuck in el-Fasher. We keep hearing feedback that people are stuck on the roads and in different villages that are unfortunately still inaccessible due to security reasons,” said Caroline Bouvard, Sudan country director for Solidarites International.

Bouvard said there is a “complete blackout” in terms of information coming out of el-Fasher after the RSF takeover and aid agencies are getting their information from surrounding areas where up to 15,000 people are believed to be stuck.

“There’s a strong request for advocacy with the different parties to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach these people or that at least we can send in trucks to bring them back to Tawila.”

Many of the people who have managed to survive numerous RSF checkpoints and patrols to reach Tawila have reported seeing mass executions, torture, beatings and sexual violence. Some were abducted by armed men and forced to pay a ransom on pain of death.

Many more have been forcibly displaced to the al-Dabbah refugee camp in Sudan’s Northern State. Some have been there for weeks.

Reporting from the camp, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said over the past few days, more displaced people have poured in from el-Fasher, exacerbating the humanitarian situation.

People are in need of food, clean water, medication and shelter as many are sleeping out in the open. Thousands more could turn to the camp as well as other surrounding areas over the coming days as people flee the slaughter by RSF fighters.

The United States, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as mediators, have all condemned the mass killings and called for increased humanitarian assistance.

“The RSF must stop engaging in retribution and ethnic violence; the tragedy in El Geneina must not be repeated,” the US Department of State said in a statement on Saturday in reference to the massacre of Masalit people in West Darfur’s capital.

“There isn’t a viable military solution, and external military support only prolongs the conflict. The United States urges both parties to pursue a negotiated path to end the suffering of the Sudanese people,” it said in a post on X.

US lawmakers have also called for action from Washington in the aftermath of the el-Fasher takeover by the RSF.

Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday called for the US to officially designate the RSF as a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Fighters with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces recorded themselves conducting an execution while surrounded by dead bodies inside el-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital. As Hiba Morgan reports, it’s the latest example of RSF paramilitaries filming their own actions.

Mohammed Zakaria had not slept in two days when the news came that el-Fasher, his hometown, had fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The Sudanese video journalist and human rights activist had been monitoring the deteriorating situation from Kampala, Uganda, watching as the paramilitary seized the North Darfur governor’s office in the city on Friday, edging closer to taking control of all of it.

He feared the worst.

For Zakaria, the “nightmare” scenario is intensely personal. Searching through social media after the city’s fall, he discovered footage posted on Facebook by RSF soldiers celebrating, standing over dead bodies. He recognised three of his uncles among the dead.

“They are celebrating by killing them,” he said.

He said another uncle’s Facebook profile photo had been changed to an image of an RSF fighter, a chilling message about his possible fate.

“We don’t know where he is … we’re really scared for him,” he said.

The fall of el-Fasher

The city fell to the RSF on Sunday after an 18-month siege, the Sudanese army confirming its withdrawal from what was its last outpost in the Darfur region, held for months by the resolve of fighters holed up there.

The RSF’s capture of el-Fasher gives the paramilitary control over all five state capitals in Darfur, marking a significant turning point in Sudan’s civil war.

El-Fasher endured one of the longest urban sieges in modern warfare this century. The RSF began encircling it in May 2024 and intensified its assaults after being driven from the capital, Khartoum, by the army in March.

What followed its fall has been described by international observers as a massacre on an unprecedented scale, with satellite imagery and social media footage pointing to mass atrocities by RSF fighters, reportedly along ethnic lines.

“We have been talking about this for more than a year. We knew this would happen,” Zakaria told Al Jazeera, his voice breaking.

Sarra Majdoub, a former UN Security Council expert on Sudan, told Al Jazeera observers were warning for months of the city’s fall, like other major urban areas in Darfur that were captured by the RSF, but “they surprisingly held on for a really long time”.

A communications blackout has all but cut off connection from the city, leaving those with loved ones there in a state of anxious uncertainty.

An estimated 260,000 civilians remained trapped in the city when it fell, half of them children.

The Sudan Doctors Network said a “heinous massacre” had taken place in el-Fasher, while the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups allied with the Sudanese army, said 2,000 people had been executed. The UN said it documented 1,350 deaths.

Reports of atrocities

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which monitors the war in Sudan, reported Tuesday that satellite imagery revealed evidence consistent with mass killings, including what seem to be visible pools of blood and clusters of corpses.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, told a media briefing on Tuesday that the killings were “only comparable to Rwanda-style killings”, referring to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed in weeks.

As early as October 2, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned of the risk of “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities”, calling for immediate action to prevent it.

Social media footage verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency after the city’s fall showed many instances of RSF fighters carrying out summary executions of civilians. In one video, an RSF commander bragged that he had killed 2,000 people.

In a statement on Monday, the RSF said it was committed to “protecting civilians”.

Majdoub told Al Jazeera that the voyeuristic nature of the videos recorded by RSF fighters was among the “most disturbing elements” of the violence.

She recalled that fighters filming abuses had been seen before in places such as el-Geneina in West Darfur and Gezira state, “but el-Fasher has been different, their violence is more exaggerated.”

“It is very painful,” Zakaria said, “finding videos in social media, and then you find that you know this person, who is a friend, or a distant relative, or uncle, surrounded by RSF fighters.

“This is a reality now for many people”.

He remains unable to locate dozens of friends and relatives.

Among them is Dr Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, medical director of Saudi Hospital, whom Zakaria last spoke to early Saturday morning, hours before the RSF took the city.

“He told me he would escape with his father and relatives,” Zakaria said. “Until now, I didn’t hear anything … We found that some doctors reached Tawila, but Dr Mudathir is not among them.”

Darfur’s governor, Minni Minnawi, said on Wednesday the RSF had committed a massacre in the Saudi Hospital, killing 460 people. He also posted footage on X showing a summary execution.

Residents who spoke to Al Jazeera in the weeks before the final offensive described daily bombardments and periodic drone strikes. People dug trenches to hide in at dawn as shelling began, sometimes remaining underground for hours.

The United Nations migration agency reported that more than 26,000 people fled the fighting since Sunday, either heading to the outskirts of the city or attempting the dangerous journey to Tawila, 70km (43.5 miles) to the west.

‘Genocide is happening now’

Zakaria left el-Fasher in June 2024, during the siege, making the perilous journey through South Sudan to Uganda after his house was shelled and he witnessed a deadly attack that killed seven people, including women and children, near his grandfather’s home.

“It was like the hardest decision I have made in my life, to leave my city,” he said.

From Kampala, he continued monitoring the violence and advocating for people.

El-Fasher had appealed for intervention for more than 17 months, he said, while humanitarian organisations operated in Tawila, just three hours away by car.

“The time has passed for actions. The genocide is happening now,” he said.

Zakaria says more than 100 people he knows remain unaccounted for in el-Fasher.

He continues searching social media and calling contacts, hoping for information.

Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab says satellite images appear to show mass killings in Sudan’s western city of el-Fasher.

The fall of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has resulted in mass killings by the group, according to an analysis of satellite imagery viewed by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL).

The RSF had laid siege to el-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur in western Sudan, for more than a year and a half. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the withdrawal of his forces from their last stronghold in the wider Darfur region late on Monday, a day after the paramilitary RSF seized control of the main Sudanese army base in el-Fasher and declared victory there.

The fall of el-Fasher has “resulted in the carpet-bombing of large swaths of the city by Sudan Armed Forces, an unknown number of civilian casualties caused by both sides, and almost 15 months of IPC-5 Famine conditions in areas caused by RSF’s siege of the city”, the HRL report said. The HRL determined this by reviewing satellite imagery and open source and remote sensing data from Monday.

“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said.

The RSF has long been accused of targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur, and the HRL, aid groups and experts have previously warned of mass violence and displacement if el-Fasher fell.

HRL’s report showed images containing clusters of objects and ground discolouration that it believes to be evidence of human bodies. The HRL appears to back up other accounts from aid groups that reported chaotic scenes on the ground, including killings, arrests and attacks on hospitals.

“The actions by RSF presented in this report may be consistent with war crimes and crimes against humanity (CAH) and may rise to the level of genocide,” the report said.

The war in Sudan between the RSF and the SAF began on April 15, 2023 and has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands killed and more than 12 million people displaced. There are also fears that Sudan could once again split, more than a decade after the creation of South Sudan.

Darfur is an RSF stronghold while the SAF controls the Sudanese capital Khartoum, as well as the north and east of the country. The RSF advance comes shortly after talks last week by the Quad – a bloc of nations comprised of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – which laid out a roadmap aimed at ending the war in Sudan.

Explosions were heard in the vicinity of Khartoum International Airport amid uncertainty over its reopening.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted Sudan’s capital Khartoum and its main airport with drones for a fourth consecutive day, as the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) attempts to resume air traffic after regaining control of the city several months ago.

Drones and surface-to-air missiles were heard above the capital in the early hours of Friday morning, residents living close to the Khartoum International Airport told Al Jazeera, before loud explosions went off.

It is unclear whether the capital’s main airport was successfully hit and the extent of the damage.

The attack marks the fourth consecutive day of attacks that began on Tuesday, a day before the airport was scheduled to become operational after at least two years of war.

A single plane operated by the local Badr Airlines landed on Wednesday, before an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the airport’s reopening has been postponed “under further notice” because of incoming attacks.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said that “despite authorities saying that operations are scheduled to start on October 26, there are concerns that this will not happen”.

The war, which started in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced about 12 million more and left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, making it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Return to Khartoum

The Sudanese military retook the capital from the paramilitary force in March. Since then, residents have been tentatively returning to their homes, often to find them destroyed.

Alfatih Bashir’s house in Omdurman, which he built using all his savings, has collapsed ceilings and damaged walls. “I built it when I was working abroad,” Bashir told Al Jazeera, adding that now he did not posses the necessary funds to repair the damage.

“I’m not working, I’m just sitting idly with my wife and two children. We sometimes barely have enough to eat. How can I even start to rebuild?” he said.

Authorities are still assessing how many houses have been damaged in the conflict, but the scars of the battle between the military and the RSF are visible across the capital.

Another resident, Afaf Khamed, said she fainted when she saw the extent of the damage.

“This house is where we were born, where all our family members got married. I now live here with my sister, and we can’t rebuild because we don’t have anyone to help us,” she told Al Jazeera.

The collapse of the local currency makes reconstruction an impossible feat even for those who have retained a job during the war. While salaries have remained stable, the Sudanese pound spiked from 600 pounds to the US dollar in April 2023, when the conflict started, to 3,500 pounds.

Goods are also hard to come by in the war-torn country, hampering reconstruction. Shop owner Mohammed Ali said materials take too long to arrive because of security checks, and that makes them more expensive. As a consequence, “fewer and fewer people are coming to buy building materials”, he said.

Sudan’s government has pledged to rebuild the capital, but its focus as so far has been on state institutions, while residents are left to figure out how to rebuild on their own.

Video shows the aftermath of drone and artillery strikes on a shelter in the besieged city of el-Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur state, which killed at least 60 people. The attack was carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to a Sudanese medical advocacy group.

The attack by the paramilitary on the hospital wounded 17 others, and is the second such attack in 24 hours.

At least 12 people have been killed and 17 were wounded when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shelled a hospital in Sudan’s North Darfur state, medical sources said.

A female doctor and a nursing staff member were among the injured in the attack on the el-Fasher Hospital, the Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Wednesday.

The medical group said the RSF “directly bombed” the facility. It alleged the attack was a “full-fledged war crime” and showed “a complete disregard for the lives of civilians and international laws that protect health facilities and their workers”.

The group held the RSF “fully responsible” for the attack and appealed to the international community and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate action to stop attacks on health facilities and civilian homes and to protect the devastated health system in the besieged city.

The hospital is one of the last functioning health facilities in the city, with most repeatedly bombed and forced to shut.

Two medical sources confirmed Wednesday’s attack, which was the second on the hospital within 24 hours, after eight people were killed in an attack on a maternity ward on Tuesday.

The RSF is pressing a fierce assault on el-Fasher in an attempt to wrest control of the city away from its rivals, the regular Sudanese army.

Since April 2023, the war between the two forces has killed tens of thousands, displaced some 15 million and pushed nearly 25 million people into acute hunger, according to UN figures, triggering what has widely been described as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Some activists say el-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast western Darfur region to elude the paramilitary’s grasp, has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.

The RSF has imposed a blockade on el-Fasher since May 10, 2024, despite international warnings about the dangers to the city, a hub for humanitarian operations in the five Darfur states.

Nearly 80 percent of households in need of medical care in el-Fasher are unable to access it, according to the UN.

Exhausted medical teams are already scrambling to treat the injured amid daily attacks on the city.

Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, the city – home to 400,000 trapped civilians – has run out of nearly everything. The animal feed families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.

The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have also been forced shut for lack of food, according to local resistance committees, volunteer groups that coordinate aid.

More than one million people have fled el-Fasher since the start of Sudan’s civil war, with the exodus dramatically escalating as the RSF has increased attacks following its loss of control of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, earlier this year.