An artillery attack by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed 13 people in a mosque where displaced families were sheltering in the besieged city of El-Fasher, two eyewitnesses told AFP on Thursday.
The strike on the mosque came from the north, both sources said on condition of anonymity, where the RSF has overrun the Abu Shouk displacement camp and set up positions in an attempt to wrest control of the city from the Sudanese army.
“After the shelling in the afternoon, we pulled 13 bodies from under the rubble and buried them,” one man who lives in the area said of the attack which occurred Wednesday.
A survivor of the strike said: “We were 70 families inside the mosque’s walls after the Rapid Support Forces entered our homes. Yesterday, artillery shells fell, killing 13 of us, wounding 20, and destroying part of the mosque.”
The North Darfur state capital, besieged by the RSF since May of last year, is the last major city still under army control, though the territory controlled by the military and its allies has progressively shrunk.
The RSF has launched near-daily artillery and drone strikes and overrun the displacement camps surrounding the city, reportedly killing hundreds and extorting survivors for safe passage.
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, 20 people were killed in RSF strikes on El-Fasher Hospital, one of the last functioning health facilities in the city.
Last month, at least 75 people were killed in a single drone strike on a mosque.
Across Sudan, the war has displaced millions and pushed nearly 25 million into acute hunger, creating what the United Nations says are the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also killed tens of thousands of people, but there is no official toll, with most of the wounded unable to access hospitals and survivors forced to bury their dead wherever they can.
The RSF’s siege on El-Fasher has caused mass starvation in the city, where families have for months survived on animal feed, but even that has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars per sack.
If the city falls to the paramilitaries, the RSF will be in control of the entire Darfur region, where they have sought to establish a rival administration.
The army holds the country’s north, centre and east.
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