Sudan is facing a deepening civil war, as Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has extended their control over the country by taking El Fasher following an 18-month siege.
The RSF announced last Sunday it had gained control over the western Sudanese city, the last army-controlled area of Darfur.
Amy chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan confirmed his forces had pulled back from the city ‘to a safer location’, the Guardian reported.
On Tuesday, hundreds of civilians were killed at the main hospital by the RSF in El Fasher.
According to reports, as many as 460 people were killed in the attack and sick medics were kidnapped, the Sudan Doctors Network said.
Who are the RSF?
The RSF are a Darfur-based paramilitary group that evolved from the Janjaweed militias who fought in the 2000s for a former government, under the authoritarian President Omar al-Bashir, to quell a rebellion in which up to 30,000 people were killed.
They expanded and were recognised as a ‘regular force’ in 2015 but have committed a series of human rights abuses over the last decade and intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya.
In 2023 RFS challenged Sudan’s official military, the Sudanese Armed Forces, causing a civil war to break out.
The group has since been accused of ethnic cleansing and killing non-Arab people.
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is currently commanding the RFS and its estimated 100,000 fighters.
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What is happening in Sudan, and when did it start?
Civil war erupted after violence broke out between the RSF and Sudan’s official military, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in April 2023.
Tensions increased over the integration of the RSF into the SAF and shooting started between both sides.
Fighting escalated and the RSF seized control of the capital Khartoum, until the official army regained control in March this year.
Conflict has since raged, with the RSF having taken control of nearly all of the Darfur region as well as regions neighbouring Egypt and Libya.
Khartoum, while under army control, has been left largely destroyed, with banks, hospitals and government buildings burned to the ground.
El Fasher was the last major city in Darfur controlled by the army until this week, when it was seized by the RSF following a 500-day siege involving a sand barrier being constructed around the city.
Hundreds of patients at the Saudi Maternity Hospital were killed, while tens of thousands of people have fled the city on foot, the UN said.
There have also been reports of mass executions, rape and starvation.
Currently 250,000 people are trapped in El Fasher, many of non-Arab ethnicity, as the UN declared on Thursday that the city had ‘descended into an even darker hell’.
Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused of human rights abuses and war crimes against civilians.
Is the Sudan conflict considered a genocide?
The RSF was formally declared by the US in January as having committed a genocide during the civil war, claims the group denies.
Then-outgoing US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cited evidence of systemic ethnic violence by the RSF, which had also blocked access to essential supplies.
While the UN has stopped short of calling the conflict a genocide, officials have suggested the conditions could exist for one.
Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, said there were ‘circumstances’ in which a genocide could either be occurring or have occurred.
She told the BBC last year that analysis showed the situation in Darfur was unfolding in a similar fashion to the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
A UN investigation concluded that both the RSF and the army had committed ‘war crimes’.
While the Sudanese government submitted a case to the ICJ against the UAE, saying the nation was facilitating a genocide, the international body said it had no jurisdiction to determine the issue.
What attempts have been made to broker peace in Sudan?
Both sides of the conflict have so far failed to agree on a ceasefire, despite several rounds of peace talks in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organisation, said that the Sudan conflict had attracted considerably less foreign interest than other wars, such as Ukraine and in the Middle East.
Human rights organisations have criticised the ‘lacklustre’ global response, with Amnesty International labelling foreign efforts to broker a deal ‘woefully inadequate’.
The country is also facing a desperate humanitarian situation, following the Trump administration’s decision to slash aid.
More than 24 million people in Sudan are facing acute food insecurity as hundreds of emergency kitchens have been forced to close, the World Food Programme said.
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