The United Nations is issuing a stark warning of a “terrible escalation” in Sudan’s two-year civil war, following the capture of a strategic city where reports of mass atrocities and mass graves are emerging.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have seized the city of El Fasher, the last army stronghold in the Darfur region. The fall of the city effectively splits the country, with the army, backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, retaining control of the capital and Red Sea coast.
The conflict has already exacted a horrific toll, with more than 150,000 people killed directly by the violence and hundreds of thousands more dead from malnutrition.
The capture of El Fasher has been met with alarm from observers and chilling accounts from those who fled. Unverified video evidence and satellite imagery from Monday appear to support claims of mass killings. The images reportedly show piles of bodies lying on bloodstained earth in the city.
Eyewitness accounts paint a grim picture. Amy Mahmood, a resident of El Fasher, described seeing videos of “entire ditches and trenches full of our friends, neighbors, and family members bodies.” She added, “there have been several reports of family members, entire families hanging from trees.”
Some of the few who managed to escape safely reported that men were lined up and shot.
While the RSF insists it is protecting the city’s quarter-million residents, the United Nations has previously accused the group of ethnically motivated killings of thousands of non-Arabs during the war. The situation has raised haunting parallels to the genocide committed in Darfur two decades ago, a campaign some Sudanese say never truly ended.
Peace advocates state that warnings about a potential massacre in El Fasher, which had been under siege since last year, were repeatedly ignored.
“We laid these options out multiple times over six meetings with UN Security Council elements, with the US government, with the British government, with the French government,” said one advocate, who criticized the international community for failing to act. They pointed to the continued support for the RSF from the United Arab Emirates, a powerful oil state that denies arming the group.
The dire situation has prompted urgent calls for intervention. “If our presidents and the world leaders don’t act right this moment,” one Sudanese voice pleaded, “we will be just sitting and witnessing the final stages of Darfur genocide.”