Sudanese paramilitary personnel killed all employees of the last medical clinic in a famine-wrenching camp in western Sudan’s Darfur as part of a wider attack that killed at least 100 people, and said on Saturday.
The attacks at the Zamzam camp occupied half a million people in the besieged city of El Fasher, even by the standards of civil war, which had numerous atrocities and allegations of genocide.
Hours after the shelling, paramilitary personnel with rapid support troops or RSF broke around the camp on Friday night. Relief International, an aid group that runs the facility, said they subsequently destroyed hundreds of homes and major markets for camps, and then converted attacks on the remaining medical clinics at the camp.
Nine hospital employees, including the principal, were killed, the aid team said in a statement Saturday. “We have learned to be unimaginable,” the statement said. “This is a profound tragedy for our organization.”
Kashif Shafique, the organization’s Sudanese director, said in a telephone interview that the aid staff (five medical staff and four drivers, all of his staff at the clinic) were shot and killed.
Mr Shafik said paramilitary personnel were warned to leave the day before the attack. But they had to treat the wounded civilians who were shelling the shelling, and anyway, the main route from the camp was closed.
“There is no way out,” he said.
The RSF has been fighting the military of Sudan since April 2023, and the conflict has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. According to the U.S. estimates, up to 150,000 Sudanese were killed and 13 million were forced to kill from their homes.
Sudan’s head of the United Nations Clementine Nkweta-Salami said she was “shocked and severe” by the violence in El Fasher, which continued until Saturday. At least 20 children were killed, she said.
Satellite images released Friday by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory, showing military vehicles burning in it. The group called it the “most important ground attack” on Zamzam Camp in a year.
The escalating violence comes days before the war is planned for Tuesday’s International Conference on Sudan. The purpose of the meeting was to attract funds for the severe humanitarian crisis in Sudan. So far, donors have committed only 10% of the 10% of the United Nations appeals to $4.2 billion.
The meeting drew criticism from some Sudanese as representatives from the United Arab Emirates will attend, who are accused of providing military and financial support to the RSF.
Human Rights Watch urged the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on the RSF commander responsible for the abuse and condemns “countries that provide support to political parties that violate the ongoing UN arms embargo.”
“Global leaders need to take action,” the organization said in a statement.
Both sides in the Sudan war were charged with appropriate groups, the United Nations and the United States, although only the RSF was accused of genocide. Sudan’s army is often accused of regularly bombing crowded markets in the Darfur region, which sometimes kill more than 100 people at once.
Earlier this month, Volker Türk, the UN’s top human rights official, said he was “completely shocked” about reports of civilian executions in the capital Khartoum after the Sudanese military took back the city.
On March 24, the military killed at least 54 people in a busy market attack in Toura, a small town in North Darfur.
However, most Darfur is held by the RSF, which has been besieged for more than a year, and El Fasher is the last major city in the region. Attacks are expected in recent weeks as RSF units were fired from Khartoum by troops in late March.
There were several days of signs that were imminent before Friday’s violence.
Videos of RSF Deputy Leader Abdul Rahim Dagalo mobilized forces in the region that he circulated on social media. On Thursday, the RSF began shelling Abu Shouk, another camp in the north of the city, killing at least 12 people, according to local rescuers.
Combatants also began to attack Zamzam camp with artillery, gunfire and drones, according to aid groups and local activists. The famine was officially declared at the camp last August.
Sudanese research group Fikra conducted research and development and urged the United Nations to start moving food to Zamzam.
If RSF overspends El Fasher, U.S. officials have repeatedly warned of the possibility of a genocide. Similar violence against the Masalit ethnic group killed thousands of people in the second half of 2023 and was at the heart of the decision to accuse the RSF genocide in January.
Abdalrahman Altayeb Reports contributed from Port Sudan.
