Pecohub 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 troops 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. 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 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 in effect 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 start a nine-month transition to a civilian-led government.
Washington is hoping that with the two-year civil war finally attracting greater world attention, the publicity may force the warring parties and their external supporters to relent on their maximalist positions
