A paramilitary attack on a market in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher claimed the lives of 18 people, according to a medical source who spoke to AFP on Friday. This tragic event occurred just as world leaders were calling for an end to the country's ongoing conflict. The Rapid Support Forces' shelling of the market on Thursday evening also resulted in dozens of injuries, activists reported separately. The paramilitaries and the regular army are currently locked in a struggle for control over the North Darfur state capital, a conflict that has persisted for 17 months in the northeast African nation.
"We received last night at the hospital 18 dead," a source at El-Fasher Teaching Hospital informed AFP, requesting anonymity for their own safety. Some of the victims were burned, while others suffered severe shrapnel injuries.
The situation in Sudan, and particularly in El-Fasher, has been a focal point of discussion this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. "We must compel the warring parties to accept humanitarian pauses in El-Fasher, Khartoum, and other highly vulnerable areas," stated Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, on Wednesday.
El-Fasher Teaching Hospital remains one of the few facilities still admitting patients in the city. Reports of a "full-scale assault" by the RSF on El-Fasher last weekend prompted UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres to call for an urgent ceasefire. The paramilitaries have been besieging El-Fasher since May, and famine has already been declared in the Zamzam refugee camp near the city, which is home to two million people. The ongoing war in Sudan has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The World Health Organization has reported at least 20,000 deaths, but US envoy Tom Perriello has suggested that some estimates reach as high as 150,000.
US President Joe Biden, who expressed particular concern over the assault on El-Fasher, urged all countries on Tuesday to cut off weapons supplies to the country's rival generals, Sudanese Armed Forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
