At least 114 people have been killed in a week of escalating attacks in Sudan’s western Darfur region, according to medical sources, as fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to devastate the country.
Sudan has been at war since April 2023, when tensions between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, erupted into open conflict. In October, the RSF captured the army’s last remaining position in Darfur and has since expanded its advance westward toward the Chadian border and eastward through the strategic Kordofan region.
On Sunday, a medical source reported that 51 people were killed a day earlier in drone strikes on the town of Al-Zuruq in North Darfur. The strikes, attributed to the Sudanese army, reportedly hit a market and nearby residential areas. Al-Zuruq lies about 180 kilometres north of El-Fashir, the North Darfur capital now under RSF control.
Al-Zuruq is home to relatives of Daglo, and an eyewitness told AFP that two members of his family—Moussa Saleh Daglo and Awad Moussa Saleh Daglo—were among those killed.Both the army and the RSF have been accused of attacking civilian areas in what the United Nations has described as a “war of atrocities.”
Elsewhere in Darfur, RSF fighters advancing toward the Chadian border killed at least 63 people in and around the town of Kernoi last week, according to a medical source at the local hospital. The source said 57 others were injured, while local residents reported that 17 people remain missing.
Access to much of Darfur remains extremely limited due to ongoing violence and prolonged communication blackouts. Information from the region largely depends on local volunteers and medical workers using satellite internet.
The UN says more than 7,000 people were displaced within two days last month from Kernoi and the nearby village of Um Baru. Many of those fleeing belong to the Zaghawa ethnic group, which has been repeatedly targeted by the RSF.
Members of the group are fighting alongside the army as part of an alliance known as the Joint Forces.Since the conflict began, tens of thousands have been killed and millions forced from their homes. Darfur has seen some of the worst violence, evoking memories of the early 2000s when mass ethnic atrocities were carried out by the Janjaweed militia, the RSF’s predecessor.
Heavy fighting has now spread to Kordofan, an oil-rich region that links Darfur with the capital, Khartoum, which the army retook last year. Drone strikes on the North Kordofan capital, El-Obeid, triggered a major power outage on Sunday after the city’s power station was hit, causing a fire that halted electricity production, according to the national electricity company.
Following its capture of El-Fashir, the RSF has intensified efforts to regain control of Sudan’s central corridor, tightening sieges around several army-held towns. Hundreds of thousands of civilians across the region now face the risk of severe food shortages.The army last year broke an RSF siege of El-Obeid. More recently, the Joint Forces said they recaptured several towns south of the city, potentially reopening key supply routes to Dilling, one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since mid-December, around 11,000 people have been displaced from North and South Kordofan states, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration. Overall, the war has forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes, many seeking refuge in remote and under-resourced areas lacking adequate food, healthcare, and clean water.