At least 53 people, including 14 children and 15 women, have been killed in an attack on a displacement shelter in a besieged city in North Darfur.
The Sudan Doctors’ Network said Sudanese paramilitaries were behind the shelling attack, which also wounded another 21 people, including five more children.
The strike by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit the al Arqam Home, which shelters displaced families in Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur province, the group said.
The attack, late on Friday, was the latest deadly onslaught on Al Fashir, which has been for months the epicentre of the war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitaries.
A spokesperson for the doctors’ network – a group of medical professionals tracking the Sudanese civil war – described the attack as a “massacre”.
A statement said: “This massacre represents a continuation of the scorched-earth policy practised by the Rapid Support Forces against civilians, in flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.”
Al Fashir is being targeted by the RSF as it pushes to claim full control of the Darfur region as a base for its parallel government, after the military recaptured the capital Khartoum and other key sites in central Sudan.
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Close to a million people are facing famine in Al Fashir and surrounding camps, as the RSF enforces a full blockade, launching armed attacks on volunteers and aid workers risking their lives to bring in food.
Inside the city, thousands are bombarded by almost daily shelling from surrounding RSF troops.
The RSF has physically reinforced its siege with a berm – a raised earth mound. First spotted by Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, the berm is visible from space.
The city, the Sudanese military’s last stronghold in Darfur, has been under siege for more than a year.
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The UN and other aid groups warn that 260,000 civilians remain trapped in Al Fashir, even after most of its population fled RSF attacks on it and its surroundings.
Sudan plunged into chaos when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in April 2023 in Khartoum and elsewhere.
The fighting has turned into a full-fledged civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The devastating conflict has been marked by atrocities, including mass killings and rape, which the International Criminal Court is investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
