CAIRO: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State on Friday, activists said, in one of the deadliest incidents of an 18-month war and largest in a spate of attacks in the state.

Following the surrender of high-ranking RSF officer Abuagla Keikal to the army last Sunday, pro-democracy activists said the RSF has carried out revenge attacks in the farming state where he comes from, killing and detaining civilians and displacing thousands.

Gezira has already faced a months-long rampage in which residents said the RSF looted homes, killed scores of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Al-Sireha village, in the north of the state, experienced the worst of the recent violence when at least 124 were killed and 100 injured in the RSF raid, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, said on Saturday.

Women groups report incidents of rape in the conflict area

In a statement, the RSF accused the army of arming civilians in Gezira and of using forces under Keikal’s command, prompting its attacks. The army and the RSF did not respond to requests for comment.

The RSF has seized control of large parts of Sudan in a conflict with the army that the United Nations says has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The war has displaced more than 11 million people, driven parts of the country to extreme hunger or famine, and drawn in foreign powers that have given both sides material support.

It began in April 2023 when tensions between the RSF and the army, who had previously shared power, erupted into open conflict at a time when Sudan should have been transitioning to civilian rule after a 2021 coup.

“The RSF militia is raiding east, west, and central Gezira, and committing extensive massacres in one village after another,” the committee said. Images on social media shared by the committee and others purported to show dozens of bodies wrapped for burial and mass graves being dug.

“The people of Gezira are facing genocide by the Rapid Support Forces and it is impossible to treat the injured or even evacuate them for treatment. Those who have left on foot have died or are faced with death,” said the Sudanese Doctors Union, calling for safe passages.

A video circulated on social media purported to show an RSF soldier who said he was in Sireha and who filmed troops lining up men of all ages at gunpoint, using racial epithets, and forcing them to bleat like goats. Another video, shared by the resistance committee, showed an RSF soldier pulling an elderly man to his feet by his beard.

Sudan’s Combating Violence Against Women Unit, a government body, said in a statement it had received reports of RSF soldiers raping women in Gezira villages as a tactic to humiliate the men and drive people out of the area.

Keikal’s defection occurred as the army renewed a push to regain territory across the country. Sudanese army general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan posted on X that as more civilian blood was spilled, the Sudanese people’s determination to resist the RSF grew stronger.

But his comments were met with a wave of criticism that the army had not protected civilians in Gezira or elsewhere in the country.

The RSF is accused by the United States and others of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, particularly in West Darfur. The army is also accused of war crimes after carrying out extensive airstrike campaigns that have frequently lead to high civilian death tolls but done little to push the RSF back.

“We are monitoring the latest, shocking RSF attacks on civilians in Gezira. The killings and sexual violence are reprehensible,” the US Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said on X, adding both the RSF and army were failing to protect civilians.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been at war with Sudan’s regular army since April 2023 but have in recent days intensified their violence against civilians in al-Jazira, south of the capital Khartoum, after their commander in the state defected to the army.

“The villages of al-Sariha and Azraq have been under attack” since Friday morning, the resistance committee in Hasaheisa, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid in Sudan, said in a statement. On Thursday, neighbouring Chad denied helping to arm the paramilitaries after the governor of Sudan’s Darfur region, Minni Minnawi, accused them of doing so.

“Chad has no interest in amplifying the war in Sudan,” said Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah, pointing out that Chad was “one of the rare countries upon which this war has had major repercussions”.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024