Recent victories have given the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control over several key regions of Sudan, including the states of al-Jazira and North Kordofan along with parts of Khartoum. Despite those victories over the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), civilians worry that SAF fighters will launch reprisal attacks against them.
“We have seen in the past how the SAF and their allied militia have killed or arrested anyone labeled as RSF collaborators, including small business owners or volunteers in humanitarian Emergency Response Rooms and other activists and civilians,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa. “These deadly reprisals must not take place again as SAF advances in Khartoum state.”
The battle for control of the country between the SAF and RSF began on April 15, 2023 and has been marked by intense fighting, civilian casualties and a widening humanitarian crisis.
SAF fighters’ actions after driving the rival RSF out of Wad Madani, the capital of al-Gezira state, in January did little to instill confidence, according to experts.
According to witnesses, after taking over Wad Madani, SAF fighters targeted laborers living in agricultural camps in the Kanabi region. Many of those laborers come from South Sudan along with areas of western and southern Sudan controlled by the RSF.
SAF fighters killed hundreds of people in the Kanabi region based on their ethnicity, according to witnesses. The RSF also killed Kanabi residents when it overran the region. Kanabi leaders have called for an international war crime investigation of the killings.
In Khartoum North, SAF fighters executed 18 people accused of being RSF collaborators based on their ethnicity, according to the United Nations. Military leaders have blamed the killings on individual soldiers and deny they have any policy that condones such actions.
“The Sudanese Armed Forces is completely committed to upholding the laws of Sudan, the laws of war and international resolutions,” SAF spokesman Nabil Abdullah told Al Jazeera.
Throughout their nearly 2-year-old conflict, both the SAF and RSF have been accused credibly and repeatedly of human rights violations and potential war crimes against the civilians struggling to survive amid the fighting. A United Nations fact-finding mission in 2024 condemned both sides for indiscriminate shelling of schools, hospitals, communication networks, and water and electricity supplies. It said that both the SAF and RSF targeted civilians in attacks, as well as through rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, and ill treatment.
According to the Sudan War Monitor, RSF fighters killed large numbers of civilians in White Nile State recently by shooting indiscriminately in villages around the community of al-Gitaina. The death toll was unclear.
The RSF has a decades-long history of violence against non-Arab groups, such as the Masalit in the Darfur region. The ongoing conflict has been no different, with RSF fighters targeting Masalit and other ethnic groups across Darfur.
“The gravity of these findings underscores the urgent and immediate action to protect civilians,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission.
In January, the RSF launched yet another attack against el-Fasher’s Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, the last functioning hospital in SAF-held North Darfur. The attack killed 70 people. The Saudi hospital has been attacked at least six times by RSF forces in their effort to wrest North Darfur from SAF control.
“At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a statement condemning the attack. “We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged.”
Across Sudan, fighting has damaged or shut down 80% of the country’s medical facilities. For its part, the SAF has launched artillery attacks against busy public markets and neighborhoods frequented by RSF fighters. In those cases, most of the casualties were innocent civilians.
Sudan War Monitor reported that the SAF’s control of one community in North Kordofan State included abuses against civilians, among them the death of one civilian and the shooting and beating of others.
“Given the failure of the warring parties to spare civilians, it is imperative that an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians be deployed without delay,” Othman said in the U.N. fact-finding report. “The protection of the civilian population is paramount, and all parties must comply with their obligations under international law and immediately and unconditionally cease all attacks on the civilian population.”
