Sudan paramilitary razes Darfur villages, displaces thousands
A series of attacks by Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces near the western border with Chad have razed multiple villages and displaced thousands of people, according to two survivors and the United Nations.
The RSF has been at war with the Sudanese army since April 2023, and has been accused by the UN of committing repeated massacres against Darfur's non-Arab ethnic groups, including the Zaghawa who inhabit the western villages of North Darfur state.
According to the UN's migration agency, more than 3,500 people were displaced on Friday from one village alone, Wadi Fungo in the Um Baru locality of North Darfur.
Issa Ibrahim, 35, told AFP that dozens of RSF vehicles stormed his village of Um Marahik last week.
"They sent artillery through homes, they burned to the ground and people died on the street with no one to bury them," he said, after sending his wife and children across the border into Chad.
"We passed by two villages, Oruwa and Ana Baji, that were burned entirely. Bodies lay on the ground."
Mohamed Adam, 43, said two of his brothers were killed in the attack on their village of Qarboura, where fighters "burned down homes and killed everyone who couldn't run away".
The two survivors spoke to AFP on Monday after reaching the border town of Al-Tina, using a satellite internet connection to circumvent a communications blackout.
Last year, the RSF seized the army's last Darfur stronghold of El-Fasher in an assault a UN inquiry said bore the "hallmarks of genocide", mainly targeting the city's Zaghawa population.
Amnesty International last week reported the RSF had committed ethnic cleansing in the attack.
The paramilitary group has since pushed west, attacking enclaves controlled by the Joint Forces, a coalition of army-allied armed groups whose leaders and fighters are also predominantly Zaghawa.
Since the war broke out, the U.N., rights groups and survivors have repeatedly reported RSF war crimes including besieging and razing displacement camps, systematic sexual violence and ethnic massacres.
The paramilitary group descends from the Janjaweed militia who, armed and funded by the Khartoum government, killed more than 300,000 people in Darfur in the 2000s.
The army has also been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians, and failing to protect Darfur's towns and displacement camps from RSF violence.
Since April 2023, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, with aid workers estimating a death toll of over 200,000, and created the world's largest hunger and displacement crises.
Source: Agence France Presse
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