A volunteer at a Sudanese mobile kitchen serves a meal to a child displaced from Gezira state due to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) violence, at one of the displacement centres in New Halfa, Sudan on November 2, 2024.
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are facing fresh accusations of committing more massacres, even as rights watchdogs say the warring factions have been violating the rules of war for months.
And Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the United Nations should deploy a peacekeeping mission in Sudan to act as a buffer zone and prevent further civilian casualties.
In a report released on November 11, HRW points the finger at the RSF for killing, injuring and unlawfully detaining scores of civilians, many of them women and girls held as sex slaves, who the fighters have raped repeatedly in eastern Al Gezira state since October 20, 2024.
At least 30 villages and towns, including Rufaa, Tamboul, Al-Sireha and Azrag, with over 130,000 people, have fled the attacks to other parts of Sudan.
According to Mohamed Osman, a Sudan researcher at HRW, this latest massive uptick in the RSF’s heinous attacks against civilians should end any lingering hopes that these crimes will stop without a strong global response.
“The UN Security Council’s minimal action is failing to protect civilians. It urgently needs to authorise the deployment of a civilian protection mission,” said Mr Osman.
The report attributes the upsurge in civilian attacks to the defection of former RSF commander in Al Gezira, Abu Agla Keikel, to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in October.
The RSF denied the allegations, saying in a statement that it had in fact repelled the violence of the Sudan Armed Forces, which it had been fighting for the past 18 months.
HRW interviewed six people, including witnesses and local rights monitors, who provided an initial insight into the events.
A 55-year-old woman from Tamboul said the RSF fighters shot at houses as they entered the town on October 22. They rounded up men and boys near her house.
“I saw an RSF soldier shoot a man in the chest,” she said. “They kept shouting at us to leave the town. They said whoever stays here will not be considered a civilian.”
Another resident said the fighters came to his house the same day.
“The RSF soldiers were furious … they kept asking me if I am related to Keikel or if I know where his family is. They threatened to kill anyone related to him.”
The rights group also documented at least six cases in which survivors of sexual violence subsequently died by suicide. On October 30, the UN, citing local health officials, said that more than 27 women and girls aged between six and 60 had been “subjected to rape and sexual assault.
The report said that on October 25 and 26, the RSF attacked Al-Sireha village, clashing with some armed residents, leaving 124 civilians dead and over 200 injured.
According to local monitors, the RSF detained more than 150 people in Al-Sireha. Two videos posted on Facebook on October 26 and verified by HRW show RSF fighters detaining about 100 men in Al-Sireha village.
The report says a video filmed by RSF soldiers shows 26 unarmed and detained men, including several older men, in a field on the western side of the Al-Sireha village. Many of the detainees appear to have their hands tied behind their backs, and two detained men have bloodstained clothing. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine what happened to the detainees.
RSF fighters have reportedly subjected women and girls to sexual violence during these attacks. As of November 4, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a regional women’s rights group, had documented 25 cases of rape and gang rape by the RSF, including 10 girls.
Meanwhile, a UN Security Council expert panel arrived in Port Sudan on November 10 to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the RSF, especially in Darfur.
It marked the panel’s first visit since the conflict erupted in April 2023. The panel will investigate the extent to which the RSF has violated the law and attacked civilians in Darfur and other Sudanese states.
It comes days after the UN Security Council sanctioned two senior RSF commanders: Juma Park Allah, the commander of forces in West Darfur, and operations commander Osman Mohamed Hamed, with asset freezes and travel bans.
