"For 18 months, the residents of El Fashir, once a regional capital of more than a million people, endured a gruelling siege, punctuated by massacres and other atrocities carried out by the RSF's fighters. No humanitarian aid could get in, and the attackers walled off the city with a sand berm. A full-blown famine hit the communities trapped within and in nearby displacement camps."
"Last week, things took an all-the-more hideous turn in El Fashir. RSF units broke through and captured the city, triggering the panicked flight of its remaining starving civilians. The victorious militias, which are predominantly ethnically Arab, have gone on a shocking killing rampage of the local non-Arab population. The violence echoes the genocidal slaughters carried out by the Janjaweed militia - the RSF's predecessor - in Darfur two decades ago."
El Fashir endured an 18-month siege with massacres and atrocities by RSF fighters, a sand berm blocking humanitarian aid and triggering a full-blown famine. Residents and displaced people subsisted on animal feed, weeds and peanut shells while pleas from UN officials went unanswered. RSF units recently broke into and captured the starving city, prompting panicked civilian flight and a killing rampage by predominantly Arab militias against non-Arab communities. Eyewitnesses reported summary executions, rapes and other abuses, and the violence recalls Janjaweed-era genocidal slaughters in Darfur. Communications blackouts and contested assurances from RSF leadership complicate accountability.
Read at Irish Independent
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