There are three ways that civilians can die in the war closing in on El Fasher, the only major city in Sudan’s Darfur region yet to be taken by the Rapid Support Forces, and they are already dying in two of them. The first is deprivation: the blockade of humanitarian aid has intensified already desperate circumstances. The second is crossfire. Two children and at least one caregiver were killed when an airstrike by the Sudanese armed forces hit close to a paediatric hospital at the weekend, according to Médecins Sans Frontières.
The third, warns Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory, is targeted mass killing. More than 1.5 million people are in the city, many having fled fighting elsewhere. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has concluded that genocide is occurring in Darfur again – only two decades after it horrified the world. Human Rights Watch said last week that crimes against humanity were committed by the RSF and allied militias against the ethnic Masalit and other non-Arab populations in and around El Geneina last year, with thousands dying. The British government has said the violence displayed “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”. There is every reason to fear that El Fasher will see more.
