Sudan’s main paramilitary forces, which have been engaged in a bloody civil war against the regular army and several allied armed movements for more than a year, carried out a new massacre on Wednesday in a village south of the capital, Khartoum, in which they killed more than 100 residents in a single day, according to a first count of victims carried out by local activists. The attack by the Rapid Support Forces, which followed a similar pattern to previous smaller ones in Al Jazira state, did not occur in the midst of fighting against the Armed Forces. Furthermore, the town that was attacked, Wad al Noura, is located dozens of kilometers from the front, which is why activists denounce that it was a deliberate attack against civilians.
A local resistance committee, which brings together revolutionary activists who are currently directing much of their efforts to document human rights violations, released images of a burial of victims of the massacre in a mass grave. The photo that has circulated the most on the networks shows around fifty bodies wrapped in white cloth in the presence of dozens of residents of Wad al Noura.
The resistance committee reported that the paramilitaries launched two rounds of attacks until they were able to invade the town, from which mainly women and children fled. They also carried out widespread looting. In a video filmed by a member of the Rapid Support Forces, and geolocated about 800 meters from the town by the media Sudan War Monitorit can be seen that heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns were used during the raid.
Three major combat zones
The war in Sudan broke out on April 15, 2023 after the alliance that the army and the paramilitaries had maintained for a year and a half was blown up, when both jointly carried out a coup d’état that ended the democratic transition that began in country in 2019 after massive social mobilizations. The fighting first broke out in Khartoum, but today it is concentrated in three large areas: the regions of Darfur, in the west, Kordofan, in the south, and Al Jazira, in the center. This last State, which is where the last massacre occurred, was occupied by the Rapid Support Forces in December, in one of the worst setbacks that the regular army has suffered since the start of the war.
Wad Al Noura is specifically located in the west of Al Jazira, within the control zone of the paramilitaries who, although they move freely, are not present in all localities. The local resistance committee said in a statement that the town’s residents asked the army for help when the Rapid Support Forces launched their attack, but those calls for help went unanswered. The nearest city controlled by the Armed Forces, Manaqil, is about 60 kilometers away. The paramilitaries claimed in a statement that their attack targeted three army positions on the outskirts of Wad Al Noura, although they have not provided evidence. The resistance committee denies the presence of such objectives. And the military-controlled Sovereign Transitional Council declared that the “atrocious massacre against defenseless civilians” claimed the lives of “a large number of citizens.”
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Since the paramilitaries took over Al Jazira, atrocities against the civilian population, including massacres, forced displacement, sexual violence, kidnappings and looting, have been recurrent and have occurred amid an almost total telecommunications and internet blackout. On May 20, members of the Rapid Support Forces raided another village, Al Takina, killing at least 20 people, according to a first count by resistance committees. Five days before, they invaded another town, Abbas: they shot indiscriminately, looted it in general and warned the locals that they would return, according to the same activists. In the previous weeks, three similar attacks were documented in other locations. The resistance committees have also criticized that the actions of the army, which since April has been trying to recover Al Jazira, include indiscriminate bombings that have caused the death of civilians on multiple occasions.
In early May, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced that they had been forced to suspend their work and withdraw their staff from the only remaining functioning hospital for people requiring emergency care in the capital of Al Jazira, Wad Madani, due to to growing insecurity, looting, harassment and bureaucratic obstacles. Between mid-January and the end of April, the humanitarian organization had carried out almost 10,000 external consultations. It also treated 16 survivors of sexual violence and almost 3,000 emergency patients, many of whom had injuries sustained in violent incidents.
The war in Sudan has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the UN. Currently, 25 million people – around half of the country’s population – need humanitarian aid and 18 million suffer from high levels of hunger. The declaration of famine is only a matter of time. In addition, those displaced, inside and outside the country, exceed 10 million; 65% of the population does not have access to healthcare, and 19 million children do not go to school. The death toll is unknown.
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