The United Nations says Sudan’s warring parties appear headed toward major clashes in the northern Darfur city of El Fasher, home to 2 million people and about a half-million internally displaced.
The office of the spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general said in a statement Friday that “The Rapid Support Forces [RSF] are reportedly encircling El Fasher, suggesting a coordinated move to attack the city may be imminent. Simultaneously, the Sudanese Armed Forces [SAF] appear to be positioning themselves.”
The statement said the secretary-general's personal envoy, Ramtane Lamamra, is working with the parties to de-escalate tensions in El Fasher.
At least 43 people, including women and children, reportedly have been killed in fighting in the northern Darfur city since April 14 when the RSF, backed by its allied militia, began a push to gain control of the city, the SAF’s last remaining stronghold in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Earlier, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged the parties to immediately halt violence in and around El Fasher.
Speaking from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Seif Magango warned that the fight for El Fasher, already raging outside the city for several weeks, may be taking a turn for the worse.
“Reports indicate that both parties have launched indiscriminate attacks using explosive weapons with wide-area effects, such as mortar shells and rockets fired from fighter jets, in residential districts,” the spokesperson said. “Since early April, the RSF has conducted several large-scale attacks on the villages in western El Fasher mostly inhabited by the African Zaghawa ethnic community,” he said, noting that several Zaghawa villages have been burned down.
“Such attacks raise the specter of further ethnically motivated violence in Darfur, including mass killings,” he said.
Last year, fighting and attacks between the Rizeigat and the African Masalit communities in West Darfur left hundreds of civilians dead or injured, and thousands displaced from their homes.
The earlier Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003 between Arab and non-Arab communities killed at least 200,000 people and left a deadly legacy of mines and explosive remnants of war, which continue to wreak havoc on communities long after that war ended.
The new war between rival factions of Sudan’s military that broke out last year has left more than 18 million people facing acute food insecurity and uprooted nearly 9 million from their homes.
OHCHR spokesperson Magango said civilians trapped in El Fasher are afraid they will be killed if they try to flee the city.
“This dire situation is compounded by a severe shortage of essential supplies as deliveries of commercial goods and humanitarian aid have been heavily constrained by the fighting, and delivery trucks are unable to freely transit through RSF-controlled territory,” he said.
High Commissioner Türk is urging both parties to the conflict and their allies to grant civilians safe passage to other areas and allow safe and unhindered humanitarian aid to reach civilians in dire need.
For his part, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reiterated his call on all warring parties “to refrain from fighting in the El Fasher area,” warning of devastating consequences for the civilian population that is “in an area already on the brink of famine.”
