57 killed in Sudan's Darfur as trapped civilians fear bloodbath

Sudanese armed forces mark Army Day in Sudan's eastern Gedaref State near the border with Ethiopia on August 14, 2023. (Photo by AFP) Related co
Clashes between Sudanese paramilitaries and the regular army have killed at least 57 civilians in the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher, a medical source and a volunteer aid group said Thursday.
The local resistance committee, a grassroots aid group, said the
civilians were killed on Wednesday in clashes and shelling of the city by the
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023.
The violence came just days after the RSF killed more than 400 people in
attacks on North Darfur's capital of El-Fasher and nearby displacement camps,
according to the United Nations.
El-Fasher, which the RSF has besieged for nearly a year, is the last
major urban stronghold in Darfur still under army control.
It is a strategic target for the paramilitary group, which has sought to
consolidate its hold on Darfur following the army's recapture of the capital
Khartoum last month.
In an earlier statement, the army put Wednesday's death toll at 62,
including 15 children ages three to 10, and dozens more wounded.
It said it had repelled the "fierce" assault on the city's
east in a coordinated response with "allied armed movements, intelligence
services, the police" and volunteer fighters.
El-Fasher has been defended in large part by a coalition of army-allied
groups known as the Joint Forces.
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Hundreds of thousands flee -
The war, which entered its third year on Tuesday, has killed tens of
thousands, uprooted 13 million and created what the UN describes as the world's
largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also fractured the country essentially in two, with the army
holding the centre, north and east while the RSF controls nearly all of Darfur
and, along with its allies, parts of the south.
After Friday's major offensive in Darfur, the RSF announced that it had
taken full control of Zamzam refugee camp -- which is one of Sudan's largest.
Zamzam -- home to about one million displaced people according to aid
sources -- was the first area of Sudan where famine was declared in August last
year.
By December, famine spread to two nearby displacement camps in Darfur as
well as parts of the south, according to a UN-backed assessment.
About 400,000 people were displaced from Zamzam after the RSF seized the
camp, the UN's migration agency said on Monday.
In the past two weeks, an estimated 450,000 people have arrived in
Tawila alone, a town about 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of Zamzam, according
to the local Emergency Response Room -- one of hundreds across Sudan
coordinating frontline aid.
The newly displaced, they added, are suffering from acute shortages of food, clean drinking water and shelter materials, with barely any humanitarian aid available in the area.
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