By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) – Sudan has seen a significant rise in civilian killings during the first half of this year due to growing ethnic violence, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.
The conflict in Sudan that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and rival paramilitary force, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has seen horrendous levels of violence directed at civilians and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
At least 3,384 civilians were killed between January and June, mostly in Darfur, according to a new report by the Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
The figure is equivalent to nearly 80% of the civilian casualties in Sudan documented last year.
“Every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground,” OHCHR Sudan representative Li Fung told reporters in Geneva.
The majority of killings resulted from artillery shelling as well as air and drone strikes in densely populated areas, the OHCHR said. It noted many deaths occurred during the RSF’s offensive on the city of El Fasher as well as the ZamZam and Abu Shouk camps for displaced people in April.
At least 990 civilians were killed in summary executions in the first half of the year, the report found, with the number between February and April tripling.
That was driven by a surge mainly in Khartoum after SAF and allied fighters in late March recaptured the city previously controlled by the RSF, the OHCHR said.
“One witness who observed SAF search operations in civilian neighbourhoods in East Nile, Khartoum between March and April, said that he saw children as young as 14 or 15 years of age, accused of being RSF members, summarily killed,” OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Friederike Heine and Edwina Gibbs)
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