At least 7 killed, 71 injured as RSF launches fiercest assault in Sudan’s El-Fasher

At least seven people were killed and 71 wounded in El-Fasher after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched their heaviest assault yet on the besieged city, as reported by AFP.

El-Fasher, the last major urban stronghold of the Sudanese army in Darfur, has become the fiercest battleground in the conflict that erupted between the army and the RSF in April 2023.

The paramilitary group has in recent weeks intensified its siege, pounding residential districts, the airport area and the famine-hit Abu Shouk displacement camp with artillery and ground attacks.

Hospitals still functioning in the city have been repeatedly struck, while the RSF has captured the local police headquarters. The medical source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said the actual death toll was “likely higher” as many of the wounded were unable to reach treatment facilities due to the shelling.

Most of the injured suffered shrapnel wounds, with 22 reported in critical condition. Local activists said the latest barrage hit several western neighbourhoods near the airport, which RSF fighters have been attempting to seize.

RSF’s “Kill Box” Tactics in El-Fasher

The RSF, which evolved from the Janjaweed Arab militias accused of genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s, is seeking to wrest full control of the region from the army after being pushed out of the capital Khartoum earlier this year.

Satellite imagery from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab revealed Thursday that the RSF had constructed more than 31 kilometres of berms – raised earth barriers – “creating a literal kill box” in the city, the report said.

Its imagery also identified munitions impact damage at the city’s water authority, which supplies El-Fasher with fresh drinking water.

Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said the RSF had confined the Sudanese army and its allied militias to less than five square miles (12.9 kilometres) in the city.

“It’s the smallest it’s been since the siege began,” he told AFP.

The besieged population – estimated by the UN at some 300,000 – has endured severe shortages of water and food for over a year, according to humanitarian workers.

Famine was officially declared in three displacement camps around El-Fasher last year, and the UN warned it could spread to the city itself by last May.

A lack of data has so far prevented an official declaration of famine, but the UN estimates that nearly 40 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished, with 11 percent severely so.

Many have resorted to eating animal fodder, while desperate attempts to escape into the desert often end in death from exposure, starvation or violence.

Darfur’s Non-Arab Tribes Face Existential Threat

“The pattern of life is ending,” said Raymond.

“They are dying in poverty, crossfire and bombardment and they’re being killed as they’re trying to leave,” he added.

Yale’s satellite images show that cemeteries had been expanded over the past months.

“The most worrisome part will be when there’s no one left to dig the graves anymore.”

The RSF, which recently announced the formation of a parallel government in the region, would control all five Darfur state capitals if it were to successfully capture El-Fasher.

Experts have warned that the city’s non-Arab Zaghawa tribe may face a similar fate to the non-Arab Massalit tribe in West Darfur’s state capital of El-Geneina, where UN experts found up to 15,000 people, mostly from the tribe, were killed in 2023 massacres blamed on RSF forces.

Both warring sides have been accused of war crimes, but the RSF has, in particular, been accused of genocide, sexual violence and systematic looting.

In the early 2000s, the paramilitary force led a government-orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, killing an estimated 300,000 people.

“The Janjaweed are about to win the entire genocide that began in the early 21st century,” Raymond said.

“And the world isn’t going to do anything about it.”

With inputs from agencies