18 killed in Sudan’s market attack as conflict deepens

Eighteen people have been killed in a militia attack on a market in the Sudan of El Fasher Town, a medical source told AFP on Friday, after world leaders called for an end to the country’s war-related suffering.

• US and UN leaders urge humanitarian pauses and a halt to arms supplies
• The war has led to massive displacement and tens of thousands of deaths

Activists said independently that artillery fire on the market by Rapid Response Forces on Thursday night also wounded dozens, as militias and regular troops battle for control of the capital of North Darfur state 17 months after war began in the northeastern African country.

“We received 18 dead people in the hospital last night,” an official at El Fasher Teaching Hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity to protect himself, adding that some had suffered burns and serious shrapnel injuries.

Sudan, and especially El Fasher’s plight, was the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly in New York this week.

“We must force the parties to the conflict to accept a humanitarian pause in El Fasher, Khartoum and other high-risk areas,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Wednesday. The teaching hospital is one of the last in El Fasher still accepting patients, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his colleagues called for an urgent ceasefire following reports of a “major attack” by the RSF on the city last weekend.

The militias have been besieging El Fasher since May, and famine has already been declared in the Zamzam refugee camp near the city of 2 million people.

A local resistance committee said Friday that “shelling of residential areas and markets by the militias continued this morning.”

The committee, which reported dozens of injuries in Thursday’s market attack, is one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups providing vital support to civilians caught in the crossfire across Sudan.

Sudan’s war has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The World Health Organization said the death toll was at least 20,000, while US envoy Tom Perriello said some estimates put the figure at 150,000.

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday expressed particular concern over the attack on El Fasher and called on all countries to stop providing weapons to the country’s rival generals, Sudanese army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

‘Stop it,’ says Biden

“The world should stop providing weapons to the generals. Let’s say with one voice: Stop tearing our country apart. Stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people.” “End this war now,” Biden told the UN General Assembly.

Guterres met with Burhan on the sidelines of UN talks and expressed concern about the risks of “escalation” and “regional spillover,” according to the UN.

Both sides have repeatedly been accused of war crimes.

The RSF is an offshoot of Darfur’s Janjaweed militias and has been accused of ethnic cleansing, among other things.

Dagro released a video of himself addressing the UN General Assembly on Thursday night, hours after Burhan took to the stage in New York wearing a formal suit instead of military fatigues. Dagro rejected Burhan’s participation, saying the RSF was “forming a force to protect civilians” and was “open to any efforts” to bring about peace.

Airstrikes and artillery fire continued to rock Khartoum on Thursday as the military attacked militia positions in the Sudanese capital, witnesses and military sources said.

U.N. human rights commissioner Volker Turk warned Thursday that “El Fasher’s fall would lead to a high risk of abuses, including ethnically motivated attacks, summary executions and sexual violence, by the RSF and its allied militias.”

Darfur is home to more than 5 million displaced people, about half the current internally displaced population, and the U.N. has said the situation there is the worst in the world.

“Sudan is also currently facing the world’s largest hunger crisis,” the U.N. said in a statement Wednesday.