Sudanese paramilitary RSF kills 19 after taking city of al-Nahud: Sources

In the most recent uprising of violence in the brutal two-year civil war, fighting has already killed 19 people and injured 37 in the Sudanese city of al-Nahud, a strategically important port city in West Kordofan state acting as a gateway to the Darfur region.

Local authorities claimed that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which declared on Thursday that it had “liberated” al-Nahud from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), had looted the market, homes, and cars.

According to Al Jazeera, a doctor, a journalist, and a police officer have all been killed as paramilitaries have fought their way out of the city, which has been under the control of the SAF since the start of the conflict, which has resulted in the detention of more than 12 million people and the destitution of tens of thousands.

As fighting between the RSF and the SAF intensifies in Darfur, where 542 people have died in just three weeks, according to the UN, control over al-Nahud has gotten more important, according to the UN.

After losing Khartoum, the country’s capital, last month, in a bid to seize the region’s most populous city, el-Fasher, 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of al-Nahud, the RSF has been doubling down on Darfur in recent weeks.

Hunderte of thousands of people have reportedly fled the desert to the town of Tawila as a result of recent violence in El-Fasher and the nearby Zamzam&nbsp refugee camps.

The paramilitary group has been approving of Khartoum once more as it continues its campaign there, shelling the presidential palace in its second attack on the capital in less than a week.

The army’s General Command headquarters was bombarded by the RSF in Khartoum on Saturday.

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, said on Thursday that the “horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds” in response to the death toll in Darfur and the extrajudicial executions carried out by both sides in Khartoum state.