The local resistance committee, a grassroots aid group, said the civilians were killed on Wednesday in clashes following an artillery attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces [GETTY]
Clashes between Sudanese paramilitaries and the army have killed at least 57 civilians in the besieged Darfur city of El-Fashir, medical and activist sources said Thursday, with civilians fearing a looming bloodbath as fighters close in.
The local resistance committee, a grassroots aid group, said the civilians were killed on Wednesday in clashes following an artillery attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023.
The violence came just days after the RSF killed more than 400 people in attacks on El-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state, as well as nearby displacement camps, according to the United Nations.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fashir to escape the RSF’s bloody takeover of the nearby famine-hit Zamzam camp on Sunday, said Thursday that the “shelling has not stopped” since.
“A hundred shells fall in the city centre every single day,” he told AFP, giving only his first name out of fear for his safety.
The United Nations, international leaders and aid groups have long warned of the carnage a full-scale RSF attack would bring on the beleaguered city and its environs, where UNICEF warns that at least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on earth“.
El-Fashir, which the RSF has besieged for nearly a year, is the last major urban stronghold in Darfur still under army control.
Following the army’s recapture of the capital, Khartoum, last month, the paramilitary group has redoubled its efforts to seize the city, in an apparent last stand to consolidate its hold on Darfur.
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 effectively split the country into two parts, 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.
In an earlier statement, the army put Wednesday’s death toll at 62, including 15 children aged three to 10, and said dozens more were 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-Fashir has been defended mainly by a coalition of army-allied groups known as the Joint Forces, which have intercepted RSF supply lines for months but could see their defences overcome by a full-scale attack.
