SUDAN’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has announced that it took control of famine-hit Zamzam camp in the western Darfur region, after two days of heavy shelling and gunfire there and in nearby areas that killed at least 100 people, including children and aid workers.
The RSF said in a statement on Sunday that it deployed “military units to secure civilians and humanitarian medical workers in Zamzam … after successfully liberating the camp entirely from the grip of” the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The paramilitary group on Friday launched ground and aerial assaults on North Darfur’s besieged capital of el-Fasher and the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps.
The United Nations said on Saturday that more than 100 people were feared dead in the RSF attacks, while an army-aligned faction led by Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi on Sunday put the toll at more than four times that.
The RSF denied targeting civilians inside Zamzam, saying that the SAF was using the camp as a “military base” and using civilians as “human shields”.
In recent weeks, the RSF has stepped up its attacks on refugee camps around el-Fasher in its effort to seize the last state capital in Darfur not under its control.
About 180km (112 miles) east of el-Fasher, in Um Kadadah, activists also reported that the paramilitary killed 56 civilians over two days of attacks on a town they seized on the road to el-Fasher.
The RSF has also been accused by rights groups of using brutal sexual violence as a weapon against civilians.
The fighting intensified after the army last month recaptured the capital Khartoum, around 1,000km (620 miles) to the east.
The conflict has essentially divided Sudan in two, with the army holding sway in the north and east, while the RSF controls most of Darfur and parts of the south.
The war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted more than 12 million and created what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Zamzam and Abu Shouk are among five areas in Sudan where famine was detected by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, IPC, a global hunger monitoring group.
An estimated 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population – are now facing extreme hunger.