Paramilitary shelling kills 20 in Sudan camp

At least 20 people were killed when Sudanese paramilitaries fired artillery at a camp for displaced people in the country’s Darfur region, a local committee said.

“The information we have received so far on casualties among residents of Abu Shouk displacement camp is at least 20 killed and 32 wounded,” the local resistance committee in El-Fasher said.

El-Fasher has been surrounded by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in a bid since May to capture the last major Darfur city out of its control.

The local committee, in a statement posted online late Monday, blamed the deaths on the “deliberate shelling by the (RSF) militias on the camp’s market and square”.

It did not specify when the attack occurred.

The El-Fasher committee is part of a grassroots network that used to organise pro-democracy protests and have coordinated front-line aid since the war between the army and the RSF began last year.

Intense fighting has pushed the Zamzam camp near El-Fasher into famine, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification review.

Barely any aid has reached Zamzam or the surrounding area, and assistance has only trickled into the entire Darfur region since the army-aligned government reopened the Adre crossing with Chad this month.

World Food Programme spokeswoman Alessandra Velluci said on Tuesday that a second convoy had crossed, carrying about 205 tonnes of food assistance for around 17,000 people.

Zamzam alone, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) away from the border, is home to around half a million people currently under threat of starvation.

The conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 and has since killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

It has precipitated one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with several areas facing famine according to the United Nations.