More than 100 people, including 20 children, are now feared dead in Sudan following paramilitary attacks on the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher and two nearby famine-hit camps, the United Nations said on Saturday.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the regular army since April 2023, launched “coordinated ground and aerial assaults” on Friday on El-Fasher and the Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
In recent weeks, the paramilitaries have stepped up their attacks on El-Fasher — the only state capital in Darfur still outside their control — after the army recaptured the national capital Khartoum last month.
Early reports from the local resistance committee, a volunteer aid group in El-Fasher, put Friday’s death toll at 57, with 32 civilians killed in El-Fasher and 25 in Zamzam.
However, the army said Saturday that 74 civilians were killed and 17 wounded in El-Fasher alone.
Activists said Friday the full extent of the damage in Zamzam remains unclear because of internet shutdowns and communications disruptions.
The Sudanese Organisation for the Protection of Civilians said Saturday the dead included nine humanitarian workers operating a hospital in Zamzam, run by an international non-governmental organization.
UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan Clementine Nkweta-Salami condemned their deaths.
“The colleagues from an international non-governmental organization were killed while operating one of the very few remaining health posts still operational in the camp,” she said in a statement.
“This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers in Sudan since the onset of this conflict nearly two years ago.
“I strongly urge those committing such acts to immediately desist.”
In a statement on Saturday, the RSF dismissed a video purportedly shared by activists showing civilians killed in Zamzam.
The paramilitary group condemned the footage as a fabricated production, labelling it a “desperate attempt to criminalize” its forces.
A local advocacy group, the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees, said the attack on Zamzam resumed on Saturday morning, with clashes and heavy gunfire heard for hours.
The camp was the first part of Sudan where a UN-backed assessment declared famine last year.
By December, famine had also spread to two nearby camps — Abu Shouk and Al Salam — and is expected to hit El-Fasher itself by May.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million since it broke out in April 2023. Both sides in the conflict have been accused of war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law.
