PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group has undertaken systematic mass killing and body disposal in the overrun Darfur city of El-Fasher, a new report has found.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which has used satellite imagery to monitor atrocities since the RSF’s war with the army began, said on Tuesday the group “destroyed and concealed evidence of its widespread mass killings” in the North Darfur state capital.
The RSF’s violent takeover of the army’s last holdout position in the Darfur region in October led to international outrage over reports of summary executions, systematic rape and mass detention.
The HRL said that in the aftermath of the takeover, it had identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains.
Dozens were consistent with reports of execution-style killings, and dozens more with reports of the RSF killing civilians as they fled.
Within a month, nearly 60 of those clusters were no longer visible, while eight earth disturbances appeared near the sites of mass killing, the HRL said.
It said the disturbances were not consistent with civilian burial practices.
“Largescale and systematic mass killing and body disposal has occurred,” the report determined, estimating the death toll in the city to be in the tens of thousands.
Aid groups and the UN have repeatedly demanded safe access to El-Fasher, where communications remain cut and an estimated tens of thousands of survivors are trapped, many detained by the RSF.
There is no confirmed death toll from the Sudan war which began in April 2023, with estimates at more than 150,000.
Sudan’s de facto leader General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan leads the army while the RSF is headed by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting has also displaced millions of people, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
Efforts to end the war have repeatedly faltered.
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RSF destroying evidence of atrocities in Sudan: report
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RSF destroying evidence of atrocities in Sudan: report
- Humanitarian Research Lab said the group “destroyed and concealed evidence of its widespread mass killings” in the North Darfur state capital
- In the aftermath of the takeover, it had identified 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
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