More than 100 dead in two weeks of fighting in Sudan’s El-Fasher: MSF | News

According to Charity, more than 900 people were injured in fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF in the capital of North Darfur province.

More than 100 people have been killed in a major city in Sudan’s Darfur region in just over two weeks, according to an aid organization, while the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied armed groups are engaged in fierce fighting against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

At least 134 people have been killed and more than 900 injured in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, since May 10, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday.

One of the victims, a security guard at the MSF pharmacy in El-Fasher, died in hospital after his house was hit by artillery shelling on Saturday.

“The number of dead and injured is increasing daily as fierce fighting continues,” the group said in a statement. “We call on the warring parties to do more to protect civilians.”

El-Fasher has seen renewed heavy fighting as the RSF pushes deeper and tries to take control. The city is the last remaining capital in the Darfur region that has not fallen into the hands of the paramilitary group. It also houses the last SAF garrison in the region. Earlier this month, the RSF laid siege to the city and launched a major assault on its southern and eastern parts.

To counter the paramilitary group’s advance on el-Fasher, two former Darfur rebel leaders, Minni Minnawi and Jibril Ibrahim, broke their months-long neutrality last November by siding with the SAF.

The RSF emerged from the so-called “Janjaweed,” an Arab force that killed thousands of non-Arabs in Darfur during the war in the region that began in 2003 and ended with a peace agreement in 2020.

“The world is watching in silence what is happening in Fasher … as if it were a scene from a fictional action movie,” Minnawi said in a Facebook message on Sunday. “The operation is being carried out by the same people who carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide in 2003,” he said.

Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal conflict since April last year, when a simmering rivalry between SAF General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” escalated into open war.

While the initial fighting took place largely around the capital Khartoum, it quickly spread to other parts of the country, including the southwestern state of Darfur. There, fighting quickly took on an inter-ethnic dimension as old rivalries from the war that began in 2003 flared up again.

According to United Nations estimates, 14,000 people have died in over a year of war. The conflict has forced around nine million people to flee and driven parts of the population to death from starvation. According to the World Food Programme, almost five million people are at risk of famine.

Observers have long warned that el-Fasher’s case would further worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in Darfur.

“Sudan is experiencing the worst famine (in the world) and the epicentre of this famine is the Darfur region, which is being ravaged by the Rapid Support Forces rampaging there,” Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

“They are attacking El-Fasher, starving the city and threatening another catastrophe in this terrible war,” he said.