Tens of thousands of people have fled attacks on camps for displaced families in Sudan, the United Nations’ migration agency says, as eyewitnesses and survivors described an onslaught by paramilitary forces just days before the second anniversary of a civil war seen as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
An eyewitness who survived the assault in Zamzam camp, which was attacked last Friday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), described walking over dismembered body parts and past incinerated neighbors as he fled. The U.N., citing preliminary information from local sources, estimates more than 400 civilians, including 12 aid workers, have been killed.
“Reports indicate the forces affiliated with the RSF have taken control of the camp and are preventing those who remain inside, especially young people, from leaving,” a statement from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. “People moving out of Zamzam were reportedly stripped of all belongings and are arriving at displacement sites with nothing, in urgent need of food, shelter and basic supplies. … Satellite images reveal widespread destruction.”
The accounts trickling out following the attack underscored the international community’s inability to end or even ease the violence after two years of gang-rapes, bombings of civilian neighborhoods and starvation.
The war between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has metastasized, sucking in allied militias and fueled by covert support from regional powers on both sides: the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Chad and others. At a time when Washington has dismantled U.S. aid programs, the conflict has spread famine and threatened the crucial Red Sea shipping lanes already menaced by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Getting information about the current round of violence has been extremely challenging; the phone network is down, and only a few citizens have sporadic access to Starlink internet terminals. One of them was Mohammed Sharif, 27, who told The Washington Post by phone that he had been in the camp, home to around half a million people, when it was attacked. His family had fled there six months ago, seeking safety from attacks on El Fashir, the last major city in Darfur in military hands.
“I was on my way to the market when sudden, violent shelling began,” he said. “Body parts were scattered everywhere, and there were injured people and bleeding bodies.”
He got back to the family tent to find his mother and brothers missing, and clambered into a hole dug into the dirt to shelter from the shelling — many of the camp residents had dug such holes after repeated attacks on the camp and nearby city.
The hole “was about 2 meters in size. People crowded into it until it was full. It was difficult to breathe, and almost all the shelters were full. You couldn’t go to urinate or drink water because of the heavy shelling,” Sharif said.
He said he later saw “more than 20 people on the ground” of a school housing displaced people, some dismembered or with faces “sliced up.”
“In our neighbor’s tent, they all died, a man, his wife and his children. … They were completely charred by the fire,” he added. A report by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab published on Monday found extensive evidence of burned structures across the camp.
Sharif was unable to find his 13-year-old brother or his mother, and on Monday, after fighting died down, he decided to walk to El Fashir with his two remaining brothers. A long line of people left before dawn at 5 a.m., he said, and in the dark, animals from the camp traumatized by the explosions clustered close to the humans who were leaving: dogs, sheep, camels, cats.
After 12 hours of walking, the camp residents arrived in El Fashir, now overflowing with fearful, starving families. He found his aunt, who had not eaten for two days, under a tree with her children. She was breaking up her last biscuits to feed the children piece by piece, he said, so he went begging for food and at the fifth house a woman shared a little food with him that he gave to her.
“If food doesn’t reach El Fashir within a week, everyone will die,” he said.
The International Organization for Migration said it estimated 60,000 to 70,000 households had fled Zamzam camp. Around 12 million of Sudan’s 50 million people have already fled their homes.
Another resident of El Fashir, Muawia Daqash, said by voice note that he was hosting many displaced people in his home.
“There is a near-total lack of water,” Daqash said. “There is no fuel to extract water from the wells. The lack of fuel has also led to the shutdown of the mills that grind corn.”
He said that the RSF was trying to block civilians from coming to El Fashir and encourage them to go to another nearby town, Tawila.
Abdul Rahim Dagalo, the second-in-command of the RSF, addressed a group of displaced people from Zamzam in a video posted on Facebook on Sunday, saying, “We are not harming anyone.” Alluding to repeated allegations of ethnic killings by RSF forces, Dagalo pointed to one of the officers, pointing out that he was from the same ethnic group as the displaced families, and told them, “He is a Zaghawa, one of your sons, and he will protect you.” He promised them he would provide them with food and drink and asked them to stay safe.
But in another video posted on Facebook on Saturday, which campaign group Avaaz confirmed had been shot in Zamzam by identifying a building in the background, an RSF soldier shooting a machine gun says to another fighter, “Hit the Nubian” — a term used for the local Black African tribes — and his colleague replies, “Kill the slave!”
Sudan has a long history of conflict between ethnic groups that identify as Arab and those that identify as African, and the use of racist language has frequently accompanied mass killings of civilians.
A doctor, Mojeeb Al Rahman, said that the Humanitarian Aid Commission, a government body, estimated that around 300,000 people had arrived in El Fashir over the previous two days, mostly arriving at night to avoid RSF blockades.
“There are a number of injured people, but unfortunately, most of them arrived in critical condition. A number of them died within hours of arriving at the hospital,” he said. “Around 80 percent of these injuries were caused by shrapnel. … We fear a health disaster like cholera after the large numbers of women arrived in El Fashir, especially cholera, because there are no toilets. Everyone is urinating and defecating in the street.”
On Tuesday, diplomats gathered in London to discuss the conflict at a conference hosted by British Foreign Minister David Lammy. Organizers hope to raise money to address Sudan’s spiraling humanitarian crisis — but there’s no sign of talks for a ceasefire, and the U.S. government has largely ignored calls from U.S. lawmakers to pressurize the United Arab Emirates to stop sending weapons to the RSF — an allegation the UAE denies despite extensive documentation by international experts.
“Weapons and fighters continue to flow into Sudan, allowing the conflict to persist and spread across the country. The external support and flow of weapons must end,” said U.N. Secretary General António Guterres in a statement. “Those with greatest influence on the parties must use it to better the lives of people in Sudan — not to perpetuate this disaster.”
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