Paramilitary groups say they “released” the camp from Army control after launching ground and air strikes on Friday.
Sudan’s Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has announced that it has been controlled by a hunger-stricken Zamzam camp in the West Darfur region in a nearby area that killed at least 100 people, including children and aid workers, after two days of bold artillery fire and firefight.
In a statement on Sunday, RSF said it had “deployed military forces to secure civilians and humanitarian medical workers in Zamzam,” after fully freeing the camp from the Sudanese Army (SAF) grips.
Paramilitary groups on Friday launched ground and air attacks at the besieged capital Elfasher in North Darfur and nearby evacuation camps in Zamzam and Abu Shuk.
The United Nations said on Saturday it feared that more than 100 people would have been killed in the RSF attack, while factions from the Army Alliance, led by Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi, on Sunday, would be more than four times that.
The RSF rejected civilian targets within Zamzam, saying that the SAF used the camp as a “military base” and civilians as “human shields.”
In recent weeks, the RSF has been working to intensify attacks on refugee camps around Elfasher and seize Darfur’s last state capital under control.
About 180km (112 miles) east of El-Fasher in UM Kadadah, activists reported that paramilitary people had killed 56 civilians in a two-day attack in a town seized on the road to El-Fasher.
The RSF has also been criticized by rights groups for using brutal sexual violence as a weapon against civilians.
The fighting intensified last month after the army recaptured the capital Khartoum to about 1,000km (620 miles).
The conflict essentially divides Sudan into two, with the troops shaking in the north and east, and the RSF controls most of Darfur and parts of the South.
The war killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million people, creating what the United Nations described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Zamzam and Abu Shouk are one of five regions in Sudan. There, they were detected by the integrated food security stage classification, IPC, and global hunger monitoring group.
An estimated 25 million people (half of Sudan’s population) are currently facing extreme hunger.
Source link
