Sudan’s infamous paramilitary force has unleashed a brutal two-day assault on famine-stricken displacement camps, killing over 100 people, including 20 children and nine aid workers in the embattled Darfur region, a U.N. official confirmed Saturday.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with allied militias, targeted the Zamzam and Abu Shorouk camps, as well as the nearby city of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province. The offensive began Friday, according to Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan.
El-Fasher remains under military control in a civil war that has raged for nearly two years, pitting the army against the RSF in a devastating conflict that has officially claimed more than 24,000 lives, though activists believe the true toll is far higher.
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The camps were struck again Saturday, Nkweta-Salami added in a statement, noting that nine humanitarian workers were killed “while operating one of the very few remaining health posts still operational” in Zamzam.
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“This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers in Sudan since the onset of this conflict nearly two years ago,” she said.
While the identities of the fallen aid workers were not disclosed by the U.N., Sudan’s Doctors’ Union confirmed that six were affiliated with Relief International. Among them were Dr. Mahmoud Babaker Idris, a physician, and Adam Babaker Abdallah, the regional head of the organization. The union condemned the RSF for “this criminal and barbaric act.”
Later Saturday, Relief International issued a statement mourning the loss of its nine workers. The organization said they were killed in what it described as a “targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region,” including the group’s clinic.
The offensive also obliterated the central market in Zamzam and razed hundreds of makeshift homes within the camp, the group added.
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Roughly 2,400 people were forced to flee the two camps and surrounding areas, including el-Fasher, according to the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees, a Darfur-based civil society group.
Zamzam and Abu Shouk host more than 700,000 displaced people who were forced from their homes during earlier waves of violence in Darfur, Nkweta-Salami noted.
Last month, Sudan’s military reportedly reclaimed control of Khartoum in what it hailed as a symbolic victory. Yet the RSF continues to dominate most of Darfur and other key territories.
Zamzam and Abu Shouk are two of five areas in Sudan officially classified as famine zones by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global hunger monitoring body. With over 25 million people, half the country’s population – now facing severe food insecurity, Sudan is home to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
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