ACJPS condemns ‘targeting of Arab communities’ by Sudan air force

Civilians continue paying the price of the senseless war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) states in a new report focusing on the systematic SAF targeting of Arab communities in Darfur and Kordofan.

On the morning of October 4, the Sudanese Air Force targeted the weekly market of El Koma (El Kuma), nearly 70 kilometres north of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.

El Koma locality is predominantly occupied by the El Zeyadiya Arab tribe and currently hosts tens of thousands of displaced who fled from El Fasher and Um Keddada following the escalation of the armed conflict, ACJPS explains.

The airstrike resulted in the death of at least 63 people (including children) while 250 others sustained injuries, the report reads.

Some of the injured were transferred to the El Koma Rural Hospital, where “only one general doctor and a few nurses” remain, while those with severe injuries were transferred to the El Daein Hospital in East Darfur, as the hospital of nearby Mellit “barely has medical supplies or personnel and the hospitals in El Fasher are inaccessible because the city is under siege”.

Mohamed El Badri, a human rights defender, urged international medical organisations, in particular the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to respond to the needs of the wounded with no access to medical care.

The lawyer told ACJPS that the reason for the SAF attack on El Koma was to “punish the Arab tribes for supporting the RSF in the ongoing armed conflict”. He believes that this “is very unfortunate because those who have joined the conflict have done so on their own personal accord. Such decisions are not made collectively as a tribe”.

A source told Radio Dabanga at the time that El Koma town has been exposed to more than 30 air raids since the outbreak of the SAF-RSF war in April last year. 

Mellit

On that same morning of October 4, warplanes bombed the area east of Mellit town.

Seven civilians were killed while several others sustained injuries. This is the 14th attack on Mellit by the SAF since RSF took control of the town in April, the African Centre notes.

The majority of the population of Mellit exists of Arab Zeyadiya and non-Arab Berti tribespeople.

The following day, the SAF Air Force unit bombarded a market in Hamrat El Sheikh, North Kordofan, and the surrounding neighbourhoods, killing around 25 people and wounding more than 100 others.

RSF has been in control of Hamrat El Sheikh, a business town with a customs port for goods imported from Libya, since the beginning of the war.

Hamrat El Sheikh locality is also strategically important as it connects Omdurman in Khartoum state with El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, and with Ed Debba in Sudan’s Northern State.

Bordering North Darfur in the east, it is home to the Kababish Arab herders’ tribe.