CAIRO, Egypt
The attacks in the north and east of Gezira state have been called a massacre by the Gezira Conference, a local civil society organization.
It said fighters belonging to
the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed a town in the Al-Kamelin locality on
Friday morning and began firing indiscriminately from high-rise buildings. At
least 50 people were killed and hundreds more injured.
In the the city of Tamboul in
Gezira's north, RSF fighters went on rampage, killing dozens of civilians and
displacing thousands of others.
Local groups say the attacks
appear to be motivated by rage after a top RSF commander defected to the army
side. Abu Aqlah Keikel, the de facto ruler of Gezira province surrendered to
the Sudanese military in early October. Keikel hails from Gezira state.
The Doctors' Union in Sudan
has said that RSF attacks turned areas in eastern Gezira into “a brutal war
zone.”
It accused the fighters of
committing sexual crimes, attacks on health facilities and forced displacement.
A senior United Nations
official on Friday called for more international attention to “the forgotten
crisis” in Sudan, where more than a year and a half of war pushed the African
country to the brink of famine.
The appeal by Ted Chaiban,
deputy head of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, came as the notorious
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces rampaged through villages and towns in
east-central Gezira province, looting and vandalizing public and private
properties, according to a doctors’ union and a youth group. Dozens of people
were reported killed.
Chaiban said the war, which
erupted in April 2023 between the military and the RSF, created “one of the
most acute crises in living memory” with more than 14 million people forced to
flee their homes, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis.
“We’ve never in a generation
seen these types of numbers,” he told The Associated Press in an interview,
referring to the displaced people, as well as the 8.5 million people who are
facing emergency levels of food insecurity, and 775,000 others who are facing
famine-like conditions.
“The whole country has been
dislocated,” he said. “And yet, despite that, the country and the crisis is
forgotten.”
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