Units of the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) killed more than 120 people during a multi-day attack on a town in central Sudan, local medical officials and the UN said today.
RSF fighters rampaged through villages and towns in eastern and northern Gezira province between October 20 and 25, looting property and shooting civilians and sexually abusing women and girls, the UN said in a statement.
The attack displaced more than 46,500 people in the town of Tambul and other places in eastern and northern Gezira last Sunday.
The Sudanese doctors’ union said in a statement that at least 124 people were killed and 200 wounded in the city of Sariha.
In the videos circulating on the Internet, some of which were shared by the RSF fighters themselves, members of that group can be seen abusing detained people. One video showed a man in military uniform grabbing an old man by the chin and dragging him around, while other gunmen chanted in the background.
“The killings and horrific human rights violations in Gezira province reinforce the unacceptable human toll this conflict has taken on the people of Sudan,” International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General Amy Pope told The Associated Press ahead of her trip to the country.
“These are heinous crimes,” said Clementina Nkveta-Salami, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. “Women and children are bearing the brunt of a conflict that has already claimed too many lives.”
In April last year, a conflict broke out in Sudan between the army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Force (RSF), which turned into a civil war. The fighting has been going on for more than 17 months, with no sign of ending.
The UN and international human rights organizations state that the capital Khartoum, as well as other urban areas, were destroyed in the conflicts.
Mass rapes and ethnically motivated killings, which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, have been recorded, especially in the western region of Darfur.
At least 20,000 people were killed and tens of thousands more wounded in this region, according to the UN. However, human rights groups and activists say the number of victims is actually much higher.
The war also created the world’s largest refugee crisis. More than 13 million people have been forced to leave their homes, according to the IOM, and more than two million people have fled to neighboring countries.
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Source: www.vijesti.me
