 "A general view shows large plume of smoke and fire rising from fuel depot after what military sources told Reuters is a Rapid Support Forces (RSF) drone attack in Port Sudan targetting fuel storage facilities in Port Sudan, Sudan. Reuters")
At least 60 people were killed in militia drone and artillery strikes on a displacement shelter in El Fasher, western Sudan, a local activist group said.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) targeted the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre, located on a university campus, the El Fasher resistance committee said. The group described the attack as a “massacre,” saying bodies remained trapped in the rubble and calling on the international community to intervene. The shelter was reportedly hit twice by drones and eight times by artillery shells on Friday and Saturday.
“Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” the committee said. “The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.”
The Sudan Doctors’ Network reported 53 people killed, including 14 children and 15 women.
The RSF has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces in a civil war since April 2023. El Fasher, home to around 400,000 people, has been under siege for more than 500 days, with families facing severe starvation. It is the last state capital in Darfur not under RSF control, making it a key front in the conflict.
The UN has called the Sudan war one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century, with over 150,000 killed, 14 million displaced, and nearly 25 million facing acute hunger.
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More ShortsUN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the attack, saying: “Despite repeated calls, including my own, for specific care to be taken to protect civilians, they continue instead to kill, injure and displace civilians, and to attack civilian objects, including shelters, hospitals and mosques, with total disregard for international law. This must end.”
The current conflict is part of decades of violence in Sudan. On Monday, the International Criminal Court convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, a former Janjaweed militia leader, for atrocities in Darfur over 20 years ago. Former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is also wanted by the ICC on genocide charges.
Türk urged the RSF and all parties to the conflict to “draw lessons from this week’s conviction of Ali Kushayb.”