In the most recent violent outburst in Sudan's civil conflict, the Rapid Support Forces killed at least 21 children on Thursday, according to the Sudan Doctors Network.
According to a medical group, paramilitary troops killed over 100 civilians in an attack on a city in southern Sudan on Thursday. This is the most recent widespread charge of a civil war atrocity in the country.
The Sudanese military had been holding the city of Nahud along a route that connects its territory with Darfur, a western region that has turned into a stronghold for the Rapid Support Forces. The paramilitary militants, known as the Rapid Support Forces, claimed to have attacked the city on Thursday.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Thursday that at least 542 civilians have been murdered in the region in just three weeks, but that the actual number is probably far higher.
In a statement regarding the conflict, he claimed that "the horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds." "The R.S.F.'s dire warning of 'bloodshed' ahead of impending battles has only increased my fears."
Rapid Support Forces members were forced from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, by the Sudanese military in March. Since then, the paramilitary organization has proclaimed its own government in the regions under its control and launched a significant effort to take over Darfur as a whole.
The Sudan Medics Network, a group of medics, reported that Rapid Support Forces fighters had killed 15 women and 21 children in a "large-scale massacre" in Nahud on Thursday night. According to the group, the forces also looted a hospital, pharmacies, shops, and a storage of medical supplies.
The organization claimed on social media that the attack "stripped the city of its last means of health care and halted medical services for many patients and injured individuals who rely on them."
According to the group, the number was expected to increase and did not include military personnel.
The city was lost on Thursday, depriving the Sudanese military of a vital base from which to advance into Rapid Support Forces territory in Darfur, according to the Sudan War Monitor, a collection of journalists and scholars that monitors the civil war, which is currently in its third year.
According to the war monitor, Nabil Abdallah, a spokesman for the Sudanese military, disputed that the Rapid Support Forces had taken control of Nahud and claimed that the military still held control of the city.
The strike on Thursday coincided with the Rapid Support Forces' prolonged siege of El Fasher, the final major Darfuri city outside of its hands, and fresh charges of crimes against the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces.
A medical clinic in a famine-stricken camp in Darfur was completely destroyed by Rapid Support Forces troops last month, according to aid organizations and the UN, killing hundreds of people and pushing up to 400,000 more to leave the area.
Many diplomats and relief workers think that the war will not end anytime soon, even after the Rapid Support Forces left the capital and despite the pressure from U.N. officials like Mr. Türk and others.
An alliance between the Rapid Support Forces and the military broke down in 2023, sparking the start of the conflict. Fears of a long-term division of the large African country along the lines of the catastrophic split in Libya since 2011 have been heightened by the paramilitary group's establishment of a rival government in the western and southern territories it controls.
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