Indiscriminate RSF shelling of North Darfur capital continues unabated

People living in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, besieged by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), are still suffering from daily artillery shelling. The exact number of deaths and injuries in the past two days is not yet known.

According to multiple sources who spoke to Radio Dabanga from El Fasher yesterday, the indiscriminate shelling of neighbourhoods by the RSF that resumed on Wednesday evening and continued through the day yesterday led to several deaths, injuries, and the destruction of homes.

Wednesday evening witnessed the evacuation of patients from the Southern El Fasher Hospital due to clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the area. On Thursday morning, more than 30 missiles hit the city. The El Faki Mohamed Saeed Mosque, east of the Igra Hospital, was severely damaged.

The Darfur Joint Force, made up of combatants of several rebel movements fighting alongside the SAF, said in a video clip broadcast from El Fasher that it had inflicted heavy losses on the RSF surrounding large parts of El Fasher on Wednesday evening.

The joint force said that it will continue to confront all attacks and will not let the city fall into the hands of the RSF.

For two months now, El Fasher is witnessing ongoing SAF-RSF battles and continuous bombing by the RSF, making the city “hell on earth”. In early May, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan Toby Harward described the situation in El Fasher and surroundings as “catastrophic”. Prices of increasingly scarce commodities like food, water and fuel soared, putting large numbers of people at risk of hunger and disease. Areas around El Fasher and elsewhere in Darfur were already standing on the brink of famine.

The city also suffers from a disruption of communications services, and people rely on the expensive Starlink network to communicate with the outer world.

In an attempt to alleviate the severe medical shortage in El Fasher, Sudan’s National Medical Supplies Fund (NMSF) airdropped medicines into the city earlier this week.

US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, later in May warned of an imminent “a large-scale massacre” in the North Darfur capital.

El Fasher, home to about 1,5 million people, including about 800,000 displaced people, is the last of the five Darfur state capitals not under RSF control.

In the end of last year, after the RSF had taken control of Nyala and Zalingei in late October, and El Geneina and Ed Daein in November, residents of El Fasher expressed their fear that full RSF control of the city could also ignite strife between the Arab tribes supporting the RSF and the Zaghawa tribe, from which most fighters of the North Darfur rebel forces hail. Zaghawa leaders have allegedly contacted Chadian President Mahamet Deby, also a Zaghawa, asking him to intervene to prevent a “catastrophic bloodbath” in the area.