UN says Sudan’s el-Fasher a ‘crime scene’ in first access since RSF capture

After gaining access to Sudan’s largely deserted city for the first time since its takeover by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in October, a UN team has described the country’s el-Fasher as a “crime scene.”

Following weeks of negotiations, international aid personnel visited El-Fasher on Friday, finding few residents left. This city was once a densely populated city with a sizable population of people who had been displaced.

After an 18-month siege, more than 100,000 residents fled for their lives after the RSF seized control on October 26. Numerous survivors reported ethnically motivated mass killings and widespread detentions.

Sudan’s UN staff members claimed there were “so few people” they could see during the hours-long visit, according to Denise Brown, the organization’s resident and humanitarian coordinator. The few remaining were sheltered in abandoned buildings or under basic plastic sheets, and the only local produce market was locally produced.

You can clearly see the accumulation of fatigue, stress, anxiety, and loss on people’s faces from the photos, Brown told the Reuters news agency on Monday.

UNICEF, the UN agency for children, issued a warning on Monday about “unprecedented levels” of child malnutrition in North Darfur, with 53% of the 500 children being screened in the Um Baru neighborhood this month being acutely malnourished.

Severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition that can kill without treatment in weeks, was present in one in six cases.

The RSF’s systematic campaign to eliminate evidence of mass killings through burial, burning, and removing human remains was documented in a report released by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab in December.

By late November, according to satellite imagery, 72% of clusters containing human-remaining objects were getting smaller, and 38% were no longer visible.

In the recent offensive against the Dar Zaghawa region near the Chad border, the RSF claimed that more than 200 people, including children and women, were killed on ethnic grounds by the organization in the Ambro, Serba, and Abu Qumra areas.

The attacks, which started on December 24 could put an end to the last places that civilians could flee to Chad could find refuge.

A UN Human Rights Office report that detailed patterns of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, and sexual slavery, revealed that the RSF killed more than 1, 000 civilians during a three-day assault on the Zamzam displacement camp in April.

In what the UN calls for an immediate ceasefire on Friday in what it describes as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the visit to El-Fasher.

The UN’s 2026 appeal has been reduced by half due to the estimated 30.4% of Sudanese who currently require humanitarian aid due to key donor funding cuts.

El-Fasher was Sudan’s last significant stronghold in Darfur before it fell to the RSF, which was a branch of the government-backed Popular Defence Forces, also known as the Janjaweed, which was accused of genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups during the Darfur conflict in 2000.

After the city’s capture, fighting expanded into the Kordofan region, effectively splitting the region into two, allowing the RSF to gain more control over the Darfur region.

According to the UN, 107, 000 people have been displaced from El-Fasher and nearby El-Fasher since late October, with 72 percent still residing in North Darfur state.

Some homes were forced to relocate three or more times, with roughly three-quarters of those displaced already internally displaced people (IDPs) who had previously evaded violence. 1.17 million people, who were originally from El-Fasher, have been displaced, making up 13% of all IDPs.

More than 100, 000 people have been killed and 14 million have been internally displaced, including 4.3 million who have fled to neighboring nations as a result of the power struggle that broke out in April 2023.

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army’s leader, recently resisted negotiations, saying only the RSF’s “surrender” and withdrawal from its occupied areas would result in a victory in the May 2023 peace agreement.

Sudan’s military leaders should pursue “a path toward peace, not continued conflict,” according to the US Department of State, which expressed deep concern over “rhetoric from Sudanese Armed Forces leadership calling for military solutions.”

The RSF referred to Kamil Idris’ request for peace as “wishful thinking” and earlier rejected it.

Source: Aljazeera