UN: At least 91 killed in Darfur city last month

Cairo: At least 91 civilians were killed in Sudan’s besieged city of el-Fasher in attacks by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, within 10 days last month, the United Nations said on Thursday.

The series of attacks was the latest in the intensified fighting between the army and rival paramilitaries seeking to control the city. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Thursday that the city’s Daraja Oula neighbourhood has been repeatedly attacked during RSF artillery shelling, drone strikes and ground incursions between Sept. 19 and 29. Turk called for urgent action to prevent “large-scale, ethnically-driven attacks and atrocities in El Fasher.”

In its latest attack in the city, the RSF fired a missile that killed 16 people, including three women, and injured 21 people, including five children, on Wednesday, the Sudan Doctors Network said.

The network said residential neighbourhoods were targeted in what it described as a “massacre.” El-Fasher is the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region, which has been the epicentre of the violence along with Kordofan.

The RSF did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The civil war between the RSF and the military erupted in 2023 and soon engulfed the country, killing at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation, and displacing as many as 12 million others. Over 24 million people are facing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Program. Wednesday’s attack came about a week after the RSF struck a bustling market in the city, killing 15 people.

The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher said late Wednesday that the RSF used drones and artillery to target a group of civilians in the Daraga Oula neighbourhood in the west of el-Fasher city. agencies