ACTIVISTS called today for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate atrocities, including “summary executions” in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that 28 non-Arab tribesmen were slaughtered by several thousand Sudanese paramilitary forces and allied Arab militias on May 28 as they rampaged through the Darfur town of Misterei, home to the non-Arab Massalit tribe.

The attack came as the paramilitary and Sudan’s army have been engaged in fighting since mid-April that the United Nations says has brought Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war.

Jean Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW, said: “The mass killings of civilians and total destruction of the town of Misterei demonstrates the need for a stronger international response to the widening conflict.”

HRW urged the ICC to investigate the attack on Misterei and others elsewhere in Darfur as part of its investigation into the region’s genocidal war in the early 2000s.

The Darfur conflict began when African tribes that had long complained of discrimination rebelled against the Khartoum government, which responded with a military campaign that the ICC later said amounted to genocide. 

State-backed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed were accused of widespread killings, rapes and other atrocities. The Janjaweed later evolved into the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.