Sudan’s paramilitary RSF accused of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in West Darfur
Al Jazeera
Human Rights Watch says ‘thousands’ killed in attacks last year targeting Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups.
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias killed “at least thousands of people” in West Darfur state, an international rights group has said, in what it called apparent “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”.
In a report published on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that RSF attacks on the Masalit tribe and other non-Arab groups between April and November 2023 were some of the worst atrocities in the ongoing civil war which started that April.
The attacks in el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, saw entire neighbourhoods housing primarily displaced Masalit communities looted, burned, shelled and razed to the ground.
The campaign that amounted to “ethnic cleansing” left hundreds of thousands of people as refugees, HRW said in its 186-page report.
The violence, which included mass torture, rape and looting, peaked in mid-June – when thousands of people were killed within days – and surged again in November, it said.
