PORT SUDAN: It took a full day for the villagers of Shaq Al-Nom, in Sudan’s North Kordofan state, to bury their dead after an attack by paramilitary fighters that left the village in ruins, a survivor told AFP on Tuesday.

The Saturday attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — the paramilitary force at war with the regular army since April 2023 — was part of a series of raids in recent days on villages in North Kordofan, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of the capital Khartoum.

“On Sunday, we collected the bodies from the village streets and inside the houses, and we buried 200 bodies,” Saleh Abdel Rahim, 34, told AFP.

The Emergency Lawyers, a group that documents atrocities by both sides in the war, reported on Monday that nearly 300 people were killed in North Kordofan villages between Saturday and Sunday.

Tolls are nearly impossible to independently verify in Sudan, with many medical facilities forced out of service and limited media access.

“It was indescribable,” Abdel Rahim said, using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation because he had fled to an area close to RSF positions.

“Under artillery shelling, houses burned with their families inside,” he told AFP via satellite Internet connection to circumvent a communications blackout.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, with 14 million Sudanese currently displaced inside the country and across borders.

The Emergency Lawyers reported on Monday that paramilitaries had killed women and children, abducted civilians and looted livestock in the villages surrounding the RSF-controlled city of Bara.

In Shaq Al-Nom, “RSF vehicles arrived in the village, in an attempt to storm it” on Saturday under a hail of machine gun fire and drone strikes, according to Abdel Rahim.

“We had no choice but to resist in defense,” he said, adding that “all of the villagers of the Bara countryside have fled.”

The area is home to several armed tribes that have refused to pledge allegiance to the RSF.

North Kordofan, key to the RSF’s fuel smuggling route via Libya, has been an important battleground between the army and the paramilitaries for months.

The RSF has tried to encircle the North Kordofan state capital of El-Obeid — the only road link between Khartoum and the vast western region of Darfur, which the RSF has all but conquered.

It has been unable, however, to seize the North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher despite an ongoing siege for more than a year.

Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair told AFP that “they want to consolidate that road that links El-Fasher to El-Obeid and other parts of Kordofan, so effectively they’re in a race against time to consolidate in the west before the rains come.”

Sudan’s rainy season, which peaks in August, renders much of the country’s roads inaccessible, making it impossible for either side to capture territory until the floods start clearing in September.