Women, girls and boys suffered reported sexual attacks in the latest violence.
More than 480 civilians have been killed in attacks in Sudan’s North Darfur region in two weeks this month, with some attacks ethnically motivated, according to the United Nations.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that it had listed at least 481 civilians killed in North Darfur since April 10 and that “the actual number is likely much higher”.
It also reported rampant sexual violence in the region, including against young boys and girls, calling the assaults “horrifying”.
“The suffering of the Sudanese people is hard to imagine, harder to comprehend and simply impossible to accept,” said UN rights chief Volker Turk in the statement.
North Darfur has become a key battleground in the war that erupted on April 15, 2023, between Sudan’s army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by al-Burhan’s former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Tens of thousands have been killed in the war, which has triggered what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
‘Widespread reports of sexual violence’
One of the latest bloody assaults occurred in the Zamzam displacement camp between April 11-13. That attack killed at least 210 civilians, including nine medical professionals, according to the UN rights office. Turk described reports of “women, girls and boys being raped or gang-raped there or as they tried to escape”.
At least 129 more civilians were killed between Sunday and Thursday this week in el-Fasher city, Um Kedada district and the Abu Shouk displacement camp, said the UN.
Some of the latest attacks were “ethnically motivated”, with specific communities targeted, it added.
“The rising number of civilian casualties and the widespread reports of sexual violence are horrifying,” said Turk.
In addition, the UN said “dozens of people were reported to have died due to lack of food, water and medical care” in detention facilities run by the RSF or “while walking for days in harsh conditions in an attempt to flee violence”.
‘Dire conditions’
The fighting in North Darfur has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of whom had previously fled their homes during the conflict, according to the UN’s rights office.
The displaced “face dire conditions amid continued restrictions on access to lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” it said.
Despite the growing crisis, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) earlier on Friday warned it may be forced to scale back its food support within weeks due to funding shortages.
Rations in areas at risk of famine have been reduced to 70 percent of a standard WFP ration (equal to 2,100 kcal per day), the organisation said.
The aid response is also jeopardised by continued attacks targeting humanitarian workers and medical personnel, said Turk.
“The systems to assist victims in many areas are on the verge of collapse,” he said, “medical workers are themselves under threat, and even water sources have been deliberately attacked.”
The UN’s assessment comes a day after the UK’s Foreign Minister David Lammy warned violence in Darfur bears “the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and may amount to crimes against humanity”.
Lammy called on Sudan’s army and the RSF to “de-escalate urgently” and said the UK would continue to “use all tools available to us to hold those responsible for atrocities to account”.
