Cairo: More than 1,000 civilians were killed in a three-day attack by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group earlier this year on the largest displacement camp in western Sudan, the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a report released Thursday.
RSF stormed Zamzam camp in April as part of its siege of the city of el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province.
In the attack, hundreds of people were summarily executed, according to the report. People were killed in house-to-house raids and the main market, as well as in schools and health facilities. The report detailed patterns of sexual violence, “including rape and gang rape, and sexual slavery.”
The report called it “a consistent pattern of serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross abuses of international human rights law.” It comes a few weeks after Amnesty International accused the RSF of committing war crimes in their attack of the camp.
Zamzam was the largest displacement camp in Sudan with more than 500,000 people there prior to the April attacks. RSF blocked entry of food and other essential goods to the Zamzam camp for months prior to the attack, the U.N. report says. Zamzam camp was established in 2004 to house people driven from their homes by attacks by the Sudanese Janjaweed militia. Located just south of el-Fasher, it swelled over the years to cover an area 8 kilometers (5 miles) long by about 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide.
RSF has been at war with the Sudanese military since April 2023. The conflict has killed 40,000 people — though some rights groups say the death toll is significantly higher — and has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with more than 14 million people displaced. Many areas have experienced famine, including at the Zamzam camp.
“The findings contained in this report are yet another stark reminder of the need for prompt action to end the cycles of atrocities and violence, and to ensure accountability and reparations for victims,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said.