CAIRO (AP) — Fighting raged between the Sudanese army and a notorious paramilitary group in a city in a central province, officials said Sunday. a war of 14 months which has brought the African country to the brink of the abyss famine.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began their offensive in Sennar province earlier this week, attacking the village of Jebal Moya before moving on to the provincial capital of Singa, where fighting has broken out again.
The group claimed in a statement on Saturday that it had seized the main military facility, the headquarters of the 17th Infantry Division, in Singa. Local media also reported that the RSF managed to breach the army’s defenses.
However, Brig. Nabil Abdalla, a spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces, said the army had regained control of the facility and that fighting was still ongoing Sunday morning. Neither claim could be independently verified.
At least 327 households have had to flee Jebal Moya and Singa to safer areas, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said. “The situation remains tense and unpredictable,” it said in a statement.
Residents reported that RSF fighters looted homes and shops in Singa on a large scale, seizing private vehicles, mobile phones, jewelry and other valuables.
“They liked what they were doing in (the capital) Khartoum and other cities,” said Abdel-Rahman al-Taj, a resident of Singa who fled to Blue Nile province on Saturday. “Many people were killed, wounded or detained.”
The Sennar Observatory for Human Rights, a local human rights group, said the RSF attacked the Singa Educational Hospital and detained dozens of patients and medical staff as “human shields.” The fighters have turned the hospital into a military center, in a “clear violation of international human rights law.”
RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The paramilitary group has been repeatedly accused of gross rights violations across the country since the war began in April last year, when simmering tensions between the army and the RSF exploded into open fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere.
The fighting in Sennar comes as attention is focused on al-Fasher, a major city in the vast region of Darfur that the RSF besieged for months in an attempt to capture it from the army. Al-Fasher is the army’s last stronghold in Darfur.
According to the United Nations, more than 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured in the devastating conflict. However, human rights activists say the death toll could be much higher.
It created the world’s largest crisis of displacement with more than 11 million people forced to flee their homes. International experts warned on Thursday that 755,000 people will face famine in the coming months and 8.5 million people will face extreme food shortages.
The conflict is marked by widespread reports of widespread sexual violence and other atrocities – especially in Darfur, where a genocide took place in the early 2000s. Rights groups say the atrocities amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
