The Zamzam refugee camp, just south of the town of al-Fashir in Darfur in western Sudan, housed hundreds of thousands of people who had sought refuge from the war-torn country's ongoing conflicts.
Alongside a long and bloody siege of al-Fashir, RSF forces, fighting against Sudan's regular army, also attacked the many people in the vast tent camp in April. Hundreds of thousands of starving people were forced to flee again - if they could.
Bomb craters
According to testimonies from the three-day assault, many civilians were executed, others were kidnapped, and mosques, schools and health facilities were completely destroyed, according to a report by Amnesty International. Artillery fell on crowds and civilian buildings, as evidenced by visible craters.
War crimes investigations must take place, the human rights organization states.
“RSF’s horrific and deliberate attack on desperate, hungry civilians in the Zamzam camp demonstrated once again the alarming disregard they have for human life,” said Secretary-General Agnès Callamard, describing it as just one example of how fleeing civilians are being targeted.
Took the city
During the siege and heavy shelling of al-Fashir, there were reports of mass starvation among the trapped residents.
Once the RSF took the city in October, there were reports of massacres, ethnic cleansing and rape.
But few reports are coming out of the now-closed city, and surprisingly few fleeing al-Fashir have reached the new and huge tent camp that has taken shape to the west, in the town of Tawila. The town has a local government that has so far been able to maintain a neutral stance towards the warring parties.
The war in Sudan is between two rival militaries and has been raging since April 2023.
On one side is the regular army, led by General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan and with a power base in an establishment around the capital Khartoum and the Nile in the east.
On the other side are the RSF forces, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti). They have their origins in the so-called Janjawid militias that former dictator Omar al-Bashir hired to brutally crush an uprising in the devastating and ethnically-charged Darfur conflict in the early 2000s.
Al-Bashir was overthrown in a wave of popular protests in 2019. But just over two years later, the two armies he had left behind – the regular military and the RSF – seized power in a joint military coup. Rivalry grew within their joint junta, and eventually full-scale war broke out.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and tens of millions have been displaced, many of them to poor neighboring countries. In the Darfur region, there are renewed alarms about ethnic cleansing.
The military is believed to be receiving support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The RSF is believed to be receiving support from the United Arab Emirates.
