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FIGHTERS from the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces massacred more than 120 people in one town in east-central Sudan.
It was the group's latest attack in the civil war against the Sudanese military which has raged for more than a year, killing at least 24,000 people, displacing millions and pushing the country to the brink of a full-blown famine.
The Sudanese Doctors’ Union said that at least 124 people were killed and 200 others were wounded in the town of Sariha, adding that the RSF rounded up at least 150 others.
A UN statement on Saturday said RSF fighters went on a rampage in villages and towns on the eastern and northern sides of the province of Gezira from October 20-25, shooting at civilians and sexually attacking women and girls.
The UN also accused the RSF of widespread looting in the area.
The attack displaced more than 46,500 people in the city of Tamboul and other villages in eastern and northern Gezira last week, according to data released on Sunday from the International Organisation for Migration’s Tracking Matrix.
IOM director-general Amy Pope said: “The killings and appalling human rights violations in Gezira province intensify the unacceptable human toll this conflict has taken on the people of Sudan.”
She called for concerted international efforts to stop the conflict, saying: “There is no time to lose. Millions of lives are in the balance.”
“These are atrocious crimes,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Sudan, said in a statement.
“Women, children, and the most vulnerable are bearing the brunt of a conflict that has already taken far too many lives.”
She said the attacks resembled the horrors committed during the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, including rape, sexual violence, and mass killings.
The RSF was born out of Arab militias mobilised by ex-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir against populations in Darfur that identify as central or east African.
The Sudanese Doctors’ Union called on the UN security council to press the RSF to open safe corridors to enable aid groups to reach people in impacted villages.
“There is no way to help the injured or evacuate them for treatment,” the group said.
The RSF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
