ICC Warns Rapid Support Forces Seized El Fasher After 500 Days Of Siege In Darfur

The ICC warned that in Darfur the “machinery of horror is once again in motion,” as Nazhat Shameem Khan told the United Nations Security Council on Monday that ongoing violence is “methodical, deliberate, filmed and unimpeded.”

“Sudan’s Attorney General and head of the National Committee for the Investigation of Crimes and Violations of National and International Humanitarian Law, Intisar Ahmed Abdel Aal, has called on the UN Human Rights Council to support the Sudanese government’s initiative to end the war”

Dabanga Radio TV Online

Khan said the war in western Sudan has darkened again for nearly three years, and that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized El Fasher after more than 500 days of siege.

Dabanga Radio TV Online

The ICC deputy prosecutor described a campaign of extreme suffering targeting non-Arab communities, with rape, arbitrary detentions, executions, and mass graves reported, and she said some crimes were filmed and celebrated by perpetrators.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who returned from Sudan after a five-day field mission, said the country has been plunged by nearly three years of war into an “abyss of unimaginable dimensions.”

Khan told the Security Council that the Office of the Prosecutor’s assessment is that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in El Fasher, notably at the end of October, following the city’s siege by the Rapid Support Forces.

She said the images show a pattern similar to what was observed elsewhere in Darfur, including detentions, ill-treatment, targeted killings of people from non-Arab tribes, staged executions, and desecrated corpses.

Direct Sénat

Türk said he met civilians displaced from the besieged city of El Fasher, now refugees more than 1,000 kilometers away, and he recalled a woman who saw her husband and her only son killed.

In the same briefing, Khan insisted that “Rape as a weapon of war” is among the gravest constants, saying the use of sexual violence, including rape, as a tool of war in Darfur is “undeniable.”

In Washington, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution condemning attacks on civilians in Sudan and urging a negotiated settlement to end the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces.

“Could a new massacre, similar to the one that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans ten years ago, be unfolding”

UN Africa Renewal

The resolution was approved by a 44-to-2 vote, and it said the U.S. State Department has determined that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have committed war crimes together.

Sudan’s Attorney General Intisar Ahmed Abdel Aal told the UN Human Rights Council that 149,860 legal cases had been registered, including 385 cases against members of regular forces whose immunity had been lifted.

She also said the committee had documented 2,200 rape cases and that the number of people killed in documented violations had reached 30,071, while the committee estimated the economic damage caused by the destruction of infrastructure at an initial figure of $771bn.

Dabanga Radio TV Online reported that Volker Türk condemned the sharp increase in the use of drones in Sudan’s war, saying they had caused the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians during the first five months of this year.