At least 13 people, most of them women and children, were massacred on a rural road in Sudan’s Darfur region on Sunday, the latest atrocity blamed on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The paramilitary group, long accused of targeting civilians, struck a route connecting el-Fasher to Tweila, according to a coalition of Sudanese doctors.
The Sudan Doctors Network reported that five children, four women, and four elderly people were killed in what it described as an ethnically driven assault. The group condemned the incident as “another episode in the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide being perpetrated by the RSF against unarmed civilians in Darfur.”
The violence came just a day after RSF fighters shelled a hospital in el-Fasher, North Darfur’s besieged capital. That attack left a healthcare worker and six patients wounded, including a pregnant woman and a child, the doctors’ network said in a report by AP.
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The RSF offered no immediate comment on either the road killings or the hospital shelling.
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Darfur has endured relentless bombardment for more than a year as the RSF intensifies its push to capture el-Fasher, the Sudanese army’s last major foothold in the region. The U.N. human rights office recently documented at least 89 civilian deaths in the city and in the Abu Shouk displacement camp within just 10 days, including 16 victims who were “summarily executed.”
The paramilitary force has also tightened a blockade around el-Fasher, cutting off food and supplies to hundreds of thousands.
Sudan’s broader descent into war began in April 2023, when months of simmering rivalry between the RSF and the regular army erupted into full-scale battles in Khartoum and spread across the country.
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Since then, tens of thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and entire regions pushed to the brink of famine. The conflict has been scarred by mass killings and widespread sexual violence, crimes that the International Criminal Court is investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
