PARIS: Extensive war crimes are being committed by both sides in the conflict that has been raging in Sudan since April, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
The Britain-based human rights group said in a report that the crimes committed by the warring parties, led by two feuding generals, included sexual violence against girls as young as 12 and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
Since April 15, regular army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan has been locked in a war with his former deputy, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
“Civilians throughout Sudan are suffering unimaginable horror every single day as the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces recklessly vie for control of territory,” said Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard.
“The RSF and SAF, as well as their affiliated armed groups, must end their targeting of civilians and guarantee safe passage for those seeking safety,” she added.
Burhan came to power, with Daglo as his number two, in an October 2021 coup that derailed a fragile transition to civilian rule after the military’s ouster of long-ruling autocrat Omar Al-Bashir in April 2019 following a popular uprising.
But the two men then fell out in a bitter feud.
The fighting — concentrated in Khartoum and the western region of Darfur — has killed more than 3,900 people, according to the NGO ACLED and displaced more than 3.3 million, according to the UN.
“Extensive war crimes are being committed in Sudan as the conflict... ravages the country,” Amnesty said, adding there were “mass civilian casualties in both deliberate and indiscriminate attacks by the warring parties.”
It said men, women and children have been caught in the crossfire as both sides launch frequent attacks in densely populated residential neighborhoods, often using explosive weapons with wide area effects.
Amnesty said scores of women and girls, some as young as 12, have been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, with some held for days in conditions of sexual slavery.
In most of the cases documented by Amnesty International, survivors said the perpetrators were fighters of the RSF or its Arab militia allies.
For its report, Amnesty said it had interviewed more than 180 people, primarily in eastern Chad where refugees from Darfur have fled, or remotely via secure calls.
The group said it had put its allegations to the army and the RSF, who had both responded “claiming adherence to international law and accusing the other side of violations.”
Extensive war crimes in Sudan’s ‘unimaginable horror’: Amnesty
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Extensive war crimes in Sudan’s ‘unimaginable horror’: Amnesty
- The group said it had put its allegations to the army and the RSF, who had both responded “claiming adherence to international law and accusing the other side of violations”
Syria opens aid corridor to Kurdish-majority town
- The Syrian Democratic Forces find themselves restricted to Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast and Kobani in the north
DAMASCUS: Syria’s military said on Sunday it had opened a humanitarian corridor to the Kurdish-majority town of Kobani, filled with displaced people, as a UN convoy carrying lifesaving aid headed there.
The aid came as the Defense Ministry announced a 15-day extension of the ceasefire across all fronts of Syrian Arab Army operations, effective at 11 p.m. on Jan. 24.
The ministry said the ceasefire extension comes in support of the US operation to transfer Daesh detainees from prisons in Syria to Iraq.
The Operations Command of the Syrian Arab Army warned the Syrian Democratic Forces and PKK militias against continuing their violations and provocations.
It also announced the opening of two humanitarian corridors, one to Kobani and another in nearby Hasakah province, to allow “the entry of aid.”
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, representative of the UN’s refugee agency in Syria, said on X that “thanks to the cooperation with the Syrian government ... a convoy of 24 trucks carrying essential food, relief items, and diesel” departed for Kobani “to deliver life-saving and winter assistance to civilians affected by the hostilities.”
The Syrian Democratic Forces find themselves restricted to Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast and Kobani in the north.
Kobani, which Kurdish forces liberated from a lengthy siege by Daesh in 2015, became a symbol of their first major victory against the terrorists.
The Syrian Petroleum Company said it had begun transporting crude oil from the Jbessa oil field in eastern Hasakah province to the Baniyas refinery on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
The move follows the arrival of the first shipment of crude oil from Deir Ezzor fields to storage facilities in Baniyas, where it will be processed.
