KHARTOUM: A strike by paramilitaries on El-Fasher, the last city in Sudan’s Darfur region not under their control, has killed at least 12 people, both the army and local activists said. The deaths are the latest among tens of thousands killed during nearly two years of war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Sudan’s army. They came on Wednesday, the same day Saudi Arabia and the United States called for the warring sides to resume peace talks.

“The militia bombarded the city of El-Fasher with heavy artillery, killing 12 people and wounding 17,” the army’s Sixth Infantry Division in El-Fasher said Wednesday.

The local resistance committee, a volunteer aid group, gave the same toll of 12 dead and 17 wounded for Wednesday’s attack. Sudan’s war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million. Famine has been declared in parts of the country, including displacement camps around El-Fasher, and was likely to spread, according to a UN-backed assessment.

The RSF control most of Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur. They have besieged El-Fasher for months and fighting there has escalated.

On Wednesday the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said conditions in Darfur are rapidly deteriorating. “In North Darfur state, more than 4,000 people have been newly displaced in the past week alone due to escalating violence in El-Fasher, as well as in Zamzam displacement camp south of the city and other areas,” OCHA said on its website.

RSF also controls parts of Sudan’s south. The army retook the capital Khartoum in late March. It holds sway in the east and north, leaving Africa’s third-largest country essentially divided in two.

Early in the war, which began on April 15, 2023, the United States and Saudi Arabia conducted mediation but multiple ceasefires collapsed. On Wednesday the US and Saudi foreign ministers met in Washington. They “agreed that the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces must return to peace talks, protect civilians, open humanitarian corridors, and return to civilian governance,” a US State Department statement said following the meeting.

Sudan’s paramilitary forces subjected women to sexual slavery and gang raped women and girls as part of their war strategy, rights group Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling the army since April 15 2023, and the war has created what the United Nations describes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

While the military reclaimed the capital Khartoum in March, the country remains essentially divided in two. “The RSF have carried out widespread sexual violence across towns and villages in Sudan to humiliate, assert control, and displace communities,” the report said.

Deprose Muchena, the group’s senior director for regional human rights impact, said the RSF’s attacks on civilians “are shameful and cowardly, and any countries supporting the RSF, including by supplying them with weapons, shares in their shame.” The 30-page report, titled “They Raped All of Us”, details the harrowing testimonies of around 30 victims, some of them girls, and their relatives.

The acts of violence described in the report were all committed in four Sudanese states, including in the Khartoum and Darfur areas, from the start of war to October 2024.

Both the army and the paramilitary are under US sanctions and accused of war crimes. Since the war began, the RSF has been accused of looting and taking over civilian homes, with rights groups documenting systematic sexual violence and other abuses. The war has killed tens of thousands of people and, according to the United Nations, uprooted around 12 million more.

The report details the accounts of two survivors of sexual slavery who were held in the capital Khartoum, one of whom described being held captive for 30 days during which she was repeatedly raped.

One woman, a 34-year-old mother of five, described how in May 2023 she was abducted from her home by seven men wearing the RSF uniform and taken to a house where another three women were also being held. “I was detained in that house for 30 days where they kept raping me almost every day,” she said. “They released me after 30 days when I became very sick. They also kept repeatedly raping the other women. I know because I heard them cry every day.”

Another victim, aged 27, was held for several days inside a shop near a checkpoint after she was detained and ripped away from her husband’s side in May 2023.

Her husband said: “They raped my wife for more than four consecutive days. They detained me in a separate shop. I could hear my wife scream as they raped her every day, but I was not able to help.” According to the report, several women said RSF members raped them because they suspected they were army supporters, while women medics were raped as a punishment for failing to save the lives of wounded fighters.

In October, a UN fact-finding mission found widespread sexual violence during Sudan’s war. It accused the paramilitaries of being behind the “large majority” of cases. The practices included rape, gang-rape, sexual exploitation and abduction for sexual purposes as well as allegations of forced marriages and human trafficking for sexual purposes across borders. The RSF rejected the accusations as propaganda. – AFP