Between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in one city in Sudan’s West Darfur region last year in ethnic violence by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militia, a United Nations report seen by Reuters on Friday showed.
In the report to the UN Security Council, independent UN sanctions monitors attributed the toll in Geneina to intelligence sources and contrasted it with the UN estimate that about 12,000 people have been killed across Sudan since war erupted on April 15, last year, between the Sudanese army and the RSF.
The monitors also described as “credible” accusations that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had provided military support to the RSF “several times per week” via Amdjarass in northern Chad. A top Sudanese general accused the UAE in November of backing the RSF war effort.
Photo: Reuters
In a letter to the monitors, the UAE said 122 flights had delivered humanitarian aid to Amdjarass to help Sudanese fleeing the war.
The UN says about 500,000 people have fled Sudan into eastern Chad, several hundred kilometers south of Amdjarass.
Between April and June last year, Geneina experienced “intense violence,” the monitors wrote, accusing the RSF and allies of targeting the ethnic African Masalit tribe in attacks that “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The RSF has previously denied the accusations and said that any of its soldiers found to be involved would face justice. The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The attacks were planned, coordinated, and executed by RSF and their allied Arab militias,” the sanctions monitors wrote in their annual report to the 15-member Security Council.
In hundreds of interviews with Reuters last year, survivors described horrific scenes of bloodletting in Geneina and on the 30km route from the city to the border with Chad as people fled.
The monitors’ report included similar accounts.
They said that between June 14 and 17, about 12,000 people fled Geneina on foot for Adre in Chad.
The Masalit were the majority in Geneina until the attacks forced their mass exodus.
“When reaching RSF checkpoints women and men were separated, harassed, searched, robbed and physically assaulted. RSF and allied militias indiscriminately shot hundreds of people in the legs to prevent them from fleeing,” the monitors said.
“Young men were particularly targeted and interrogated about their ethnicity. If identified as Masalit, many were summarily executed with a shot to the head. Women were physically and sexually assaulted. Indiscriminate shootings also injured and killed women and children,” the report said.
Everyone who spoke to the monitors mentioned “many dead bodies along the road, including those of women, children and young men.”
The monitors also reported “widespread” conflict-related sexual violence committed by RSF and allied militia.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done