Rapid Support Forces

To Sudan, where the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights warned of a growing and horrific toll on civilians, as rival militaries battle for control of the eastern city of El Fasha in North Darfur.

The city's people have been under siege since May 2024, when the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, and Allied Tribal Militia prevented people from leaving in safety unless they paid huge amounts to their captors.

In the past two weeks, the battle for El Fasha has escalated significantly, UN Rights Chief Volker Turk said, as he noted that his office has documented increasing numbers of civilians being killed from shelling and airstrikes by the RSF and the Sudanese armed forces.

Mr Turk said that the heaviest recent fighting on the 20th and 21st of September had killed at least 20 civilians after they were cut down by artillery fire near the main market.

The actual number of civilian casualties is believed to be much higher, but telecommunications blackouts have made verification difficult, the High Commissioner said.

Sudan's displaced have endured unimaginable suffering, including murder and mass rape, in their search for shelter from the country's ongoing war, UN humanitarians warned on Friday.

It's been 19 months since conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the rival Rapid Support Forces militia over the transfer of power to civilian rule.

According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 3 million people have now been forced to flee the country in search of safety, while many millions more remain displaced inside Sudan.

At a briefing in Geneva, UNHCR's Dominic Hyde recounted the testimonies of survivors she met in Chad last week.

Fighting erupted in April last year between rival militaries over a proposed transition to civilian rule following a military coup in 2021 and the 2019 ousting of longtime President Omar al-Bashir.

UN Geneva spokesperson Alessandra Valucci confirmed that only one of the delegation attended the initial discussions after senior representatives to the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary rapid support forces accepted invitations to meet the UN Secretary General's personal envoy for Sudan, Ramtani Lamamra.

Mr Lamamra and his team invited both parties to continue discussions with him separately on Friday in the Swiss city in the process known as proximity talks.

The development comes amid increasing international pressure for an end to the fighting, which has uprooted millions and sparked growing fears of imminent famine.

Sudan's humanitarian situation is catastrophic and deteriorating after more than 18 months of war, with 11 million people now displaced inside the country and another 3.1 million sheltering beyond its borders, the UN migration agency said on Tuesday.

Some 200,000 people were uprooted in September alone as a result of ongoing heavy fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and rival rapid support forces, according to data from the International Organization for Migration .

In a related development, the UN Human Rights Office expressed deep concern about escalating hostilities and violence in Sudan's Al Jazeera state.

OHCHR spokesperson Saif Magango said that attacks by RSF militia on villages in Al Jazeera state had increased in apparent retaliation for the recent defection of a commander to forces loyal to Sudan's military government.

In an update, the WFP said that the violence had severely affected operations across the region, including White Nile, Blue Nile, Kassala and Gedarev states.

Fighting in Sana'a cut off key supply routes for food and fuel into the state, leaving residents unable to access basic needs, WFP explained, adding that its logistics hub in Kosti in White Nile state is completely cut off from Port Sudan on the coast after rival paramilitary force, the RSF, moved in on 29 June.

The route from Port Sudan to Kosti that cuts through Senar is currently inaccessible.

WFP continued, describing the route as a lifeline to get assistance to hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan, including many communities at risk of famine in the Kordofans and the Darfur region.

from attacks or fleeing.

We also found evidence of women being subjected to sexual slavery after being abducted by RSF members.

Since mid-April 2023, the conflict in Sudan has spread to 14 out of the 18 states, impacting the entire country and the region, leaving 8 million Sudanese internally displaced as a result of the conflict and more than 2 million forced to flee to neighbouring countries.

To halt the fighting, the top rights experts called for a country-wide extension of the existing arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur's to prevent the transfer of heavy weapons and ammunition.

It's not nuclear weapons, right? If you had nuclear weapons, somehow, let's say, that managed to get a lot of money through some of their Middle Eastern friends and bought some, you know, warheads, really, and had a few.

And then the stories that, given the fighting in that region, given, let's say, the afraid they may lose to the RSF at some point, are they likely to use one of those nuclear bombs? And detonate and impact the entire region? Okay.

So that to me would be a very legitimate story.

And then you would still have to contend with these two facts.

This military government is supposed to be the lesser of two evils.

Because then you would have to say, okay, if they didn't use it, they're pushed out of the capital cartoon, and then ISF ends up in command of the nuclear warheads.

Which one would be better? The current military government controlling it or the RSF, based on what they did in Fasha, I think that's the name of the town, where they basically killed everybody, children, women, even those in hospital.

And we could see the images even from dead bodies from the satellite photographs.

And most recently, it was in the newspapers, it's public knowledge that Kenya has also been meddling in the affairs of Sudan.

With the RSF leadership coming to Nairobi and all these things.

And so I think, and you know, there is a bigger project to balkanize Sudan into many smaller countries over the years.

And Kenya really is playing a huge role because it's a country that was historically respected.