Sudanese paramilitaries advance into military’s last stronghold in Darfur

Cairo: Notorious paramilitaries said they had seized a headquarters in the centre of the besieged provincial capital of North Darfur, the Sudanese military’s last stronghold in Darfur.

As fighting continued to rage on Monday in el-Fasher, a medical group said the Rapid Support Forces had killed dozens of civilians and destroyed health care infrastructure the previous day in the city, where hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped for more than a year.

Losing the 6th Division base is a major setback to the military and its allies. Fighting was continuing Monday morning around the airfield of the base, as well as on the western side of the city, according to Resistance Committees in el-Fasher, a grassroots group tracking the war.

The group criticised the military for what it said was a lack of air support to troops trying to fend off the RSF attacks.

The military has yet to comment on the RSF capture of the base.

However, military officials confirmed that troops vacated the base on Sunday and retreated to another defence line under heavy shelling and artillery attacks from the paramilitaries.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, HRL, confirmed through satellite imagery that the paramilitaries advanced Sunday as far as the 6th Division headquarters, with “significant evidence of close-quarter battle in the area.”