Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed at least 124 people in a village in El Gezira State on Friday, activists said, in one of the deadliest incidents of an 18-month war and largest in a spate of attacks in the state.
Following the surrender of high-ranking RSF officer Abuagla Keikal to the army last Sunday, pro-democracy activists said the RSF has carried out revenge attacks in the farming state where he comes from, killing and detaining civilians and displacing thousands.
Gezira has already faced a months-long rampage in which residents told Reuters the RSF looted homes, killed scores of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Al-Sireha village, in the north of the state, experienced the worst of the recent violence when at least 124 were killed and 100 injured in the RSF raid, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, said on Saturday.
In a statement on Friday, the RSF accused the army of arming civilians in Gezira and of using forces under Keikal’s command, prompting its attacks.
The army and the RSF did not respond to requests for comment.
The RSF has seized control of large parts of Sudan in a conflict with the army that the United Nations says has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The war has displaced more than 11 million people, driven parts of the country to extreme hunger or famine, and drawn in foreign powers that have given both sides material support.
It began in April 2023 when tensions between the RSF and the army, who had previously shared power, erupted into open conflict at a time when Sudan should have been transitioning to civilian rule after a 2021 coup.
“The RSF militia is raiding east, west, and central Gezira, and committing extensive massacres in one village after another,” the committee said.
Images on social media shared by the committee and others purported to show dozens of bodies wrapped for burial and mass graves being dug. (Reuters)
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