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The UN secretary general, António Guterres has said the war in Sudan is spiralling out of control as he called for a halt to the fighting and an end to the violence.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized El Fasher in Darfur last week after a near 18-month siege. Some of its soldiers have posted videos of civilians being shot, including in the town’s maternity hospital.
The two-year civil war between the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) and the RSF has created what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century. More than 150,000 people have been killed and more than 14 million displaced from their homes.
Prosecutors at the international criminal court said on Monday that they were collecting evidence of alleged mass killings, rape and other crimes in El Fasher.
Guterres urged the warring parties to “come to the negotiating table, bring an end to this nightmare of violence - now”.
“The horrifying crisis in Sudan ... is spiralling out of control,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the World Summit for Social Development in Qatar.
“El Fasher and the surrounding areas in North Darfur have been an epicentre of suffering, hunger, violence and displacement,” he said.
“And since the Rapid Support Forces entered El Fasher last weekend, the situation is growing worse by the day,. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped by this siege. People are dying of malnutrition, disease and violence.”
His call at the Doha conference came as the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) based in Port Sudan discussed whether to support a US-proposed truce, or to insist any ceasefire be dependent on the RSF withdrawing from Sudan’s cities, including El Fasher.
The fall of El Fasher gives the RSF control of all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan could effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis, but the Sudanese ambassador to the UK, Babikir Elamin, said there was little support for partition in Darfur itself.
He said the priority was not a ceasefire, but action to end the massacres in El Fasher.
The US has been trying since September to persuade the two sides to back a peace plan agreed by Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia that would start with a three-month humanitarian pause, followed by a permanent ceasefire that would trigger a nine-month transition to a civilian-led government.
Washington is hoping that with the two-year civil war finally attracting greater worldwide attention, the publicity may force the warring parties and their external supporters to relent on their maximalist positions.
Initial signs from a lengthy SAF security and defence council meeting, however, are that there is strong resistance to the US plan developed by Donald Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos.
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Some SAF sources, admitting they were under new pressure from Egypt to accept a ceasefire, countered with a call for the RSF to be confined to camps outside cities. It is not clear how such RSF withdrawals could be enforced.
Speaking in London, Elamin called on Washington to designate the RSF a terrorist organisation by the US and for a ban on all arms sales to the UAE.
The UAE denies supplying weapons to the RSF.
“The RSF are now openly and publicly vowing to commit yet further crimes in cities and parts of the country. They have named the cities, the communities and the ethnic groups they are targeting,” Elamin said.
“Parts of the country that have never witnessed violence are now threatened. They are proudly making videos of themselves murdering innocent civilians. Some of them admit they have lost count of the number of people they have killed.”
He pointed out that as the SAF leadership had been exploring the potential US peace plan, the RSF were attacking El Fasher.
“What is the reason for getting engaged in talks while they are still committing these kind of atrocities,” he said. “Before we can discuss the kind of proposal, the international community should show some kind of seriousness in dealing with these atrocities that are still taking place in El Fasher.
“The priority now must be to stop the atrocities and this kind of genocide.”
