In El-Fasher besieged for a year, the merciless offensive of the paramilitaries-Liberation
The seat has been going on for a year now. The rapid support forces (RSF), a dissident paramilitary unit led by General Hemetti, surrounds El-Fasher, the only big city in Darfur to escape their control. They regularly launch assaults towards the city, defended by the sixth division of the regular army and especially its allies of the joint force, composed of rebel vertens from Darfur.
The RSF offensives have hitherto been rejected. But the paramilitaries, Khartoum driven out and the agricultural state of the Jézira, south of the capital, at the beginning of the year, are now redoubled with ardor to seize El-Fasher. They no longer hesitate to bomb and attack the displaced camps which are near the city, like that of Zamzam, April 11, Or that of Abu Shouk, a few days later. Their assaults have left hundreds of deaths and pushed tens of thousands of people on the roads.
On May 1, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that at least 542 civilians have been killed for three weeks in Darfour-Nord. « The actual assessment is undoubtedly much higher, he said. The horror of what is happening in Sudan is limitless. ” Rapid support forces have openly warned that a « Blood bath » was waiting for the city of El-Fasher.
« The RSF systematically kills all men of fighting age who are not Arab », Tells Mohammed Sadam, a Darfouri refugee in France whose family fled the Zamzam camp last week. It belongs to the Zaghawa community, like most combatants of the joint force. “We are fighting for our survival. If the RSF take El-Fasher, they go Clean the city as in El-Geneina (where the paramilitaries killed between 10,000 and 15,000 members of the Masalit community in June then November 2023) ”, he assures.
For the past year, the joint force, Commissioned by the former Rebel Chief Minna Minnawi, today Governor of Darfur, « Played a crucial role in allowing the Sudanese armed forces (the regular army) to hold El-Fasher, launching various maneuvers to disturb the refueling routes of the RSF », Details a note from the NGO Armed Conflict Rental and Event Data (ACLED) published on April 15 :: « These operations inflicted considerable losses on the RSF, forcing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to strengthen his front lines in El Fasher, further weakening his ability to keep control over other battle fronts. »
The RSFs, however, are intensifying their indiscriminate bombings on the historic capital of the Darfur sultanate and on the overcrowded camps that surround it – that of Zamzam alone had nearly a million displaced. On April 24, Hemetti’s men again launched two attacks on El-Fasher, one from the south during the afternoon, the other after dark from the north of the city. The army claims that 700 paramilitaries, aboard about sixty vehicles, participated in the offensive. Among them, 70 would have been killed, and 30 injured.
