BEIRUT: Fighting in and around a displaced persons camp in western Sudan killed at least 53 civilians and wounded more than 60 others over a three-day period this week, the UN human rights chief said, and the death toll is rising.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Thursday that drone and artillery strikes by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Abu Shouk and Daraja Oula neighborhoods of el-Fasher and the el-Fasher displaced persons camp killed 46 people.
Among the 46 killed, over a dozen died in shelling at one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher. The shelling also struck a nearby mosque where people were taking refuge, said the UN Human Rights office.
The statement also said at least seven other people were summarily executed after ground raids by the RSF in ethnically motivated killings. Both the RSF and the Sudanese military have been accused of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity and are under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
“Despite repeated calls, including my own, for specific care to be taken to protect civilians, they continue instead to kill, injure, and displace civilians, and to attack civilian objects, including IDP shelters, hospitals and mosques, with total disregard for international law, ” said Turk. “This must end.”
Türk called for UN Member States with direct influence to take urgent measures to “protect civilians and to prevent further atrocities” in el-Fasher and across the Darfur region.
Sudan has been in the throes of conflict since 2023, when tensions between the RSF and the Sudanese military erupted. Darfur has been at the epicenter of the fighting.
The war in Sudan has killed more than 40,000 people, forced more than 14 million to flee their homes and famine has been declared in parts of the country, including Darfur.
El-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, has been under siege for over a year. The UN and other aid groups warn that 260,000 civilians remain trapped in the city.
Hundreds of thousands have fled to Tawila, just outside el-Fasher.
“I consider Tawila as one of the epicenters of, frankly, what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe here,” said Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan last week from Tawila, the closest they could get to the besieged city of el-Fasher.
“There are about 600,000 internally displaced here, mostly fleeing from el-Fasher,” she said.
They are part of the 10 million people displaced in the country and Brown said the UN humanitarian plan is only 25 percent funded.
She said she met a woman who had just arrived from el-Fasher on a donkey after traveling for seven days through remote villages to stay off back roads with her children, including a severely malnourished baby.
“Local actors on the ground in el-Fasher are doing what they can to provide some very limited basic assistance,” Brown said. “It’s totally insufficient.”
She said the UN is working to negotiate access to el-Fasher.
UN says 53 civilians killed during 3 days of attacks in and near el-Fasher camp in western Sudan
https://arab.news/wf9cd
UN says 53 civilians killed during 3 days of attacks in and near el-Fasher camp in western Sudan
- Among the 46 killed, over a dozen died in shelling at one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher
- The shelling also struck a nearby mosque where people were taking refuge, said the UN Human Rights office
Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon kills 13 people, Lebanese ministry says
- Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed 13 people and wounded several others, state media and government officials said. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.
The drone strike hit a car in the parking lot of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the state-run National News Agency said. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 13 people were killed and several others wounded in the airstrike, without giving further details.
Hamas fighters in the area prevented journalists from reaching the scene, as ambulances rushed to evacuate the wounded and the dead.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever the group operates.
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound.
Over the past two years, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed scores of officials from the militant Hezbollah group as well as Palestinian factions such as Hamas.
Saleh Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas and a founder of the group’s military wing, was killed in a drone strike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Jan. 2, 2024. Several other Hamas officials have been killed in strikes since then.
Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. That sparked Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A day after the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah began firing rockets toward Israeli posts along the border. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September 2024.
That war, the most recent of several conflicts involving Hezbollah over the past four decades, killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.
The war ended in late November 2024 with a US-brokered ceasefire. Since then, Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.
