Sudan’s army said paramilitary forces launched drone strikes on Thursday targeting a northern town housing a major dam, while fighting between the foes raged in the strategic region of Kordofan.
The violence comes after the Group of Seven (G7) sounded the alarm on Wednesday over the “recent escalation of violence” in Sudan’s war, which erupted more than two and a half years ago.
The war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million more and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The violence has escalated dramatically in recent weeks, with the RSF seizing control of the key town of El-Fasher and with reports of atrocities multiplying.
On Thursday, drones “targeted the army headquarters, the airport and the Merowe Dam,” an army statement said, adding that it had intercepted the attacks that it blamed on the RSF.
Merowe is in an area that has been under army control for months.
The town, about 330 kilometers (200 miles) north of the capital Khartoum, was plunged into darkness after a full power cut, witnesses told AFP.
The RSF has increasingly resorted to drones in recent months, though the military also uses drones to conduct strikes.
770 km on Foot
In late October, the RSF captured El-Fasher, the last army stronghold in the vast western Darfur region, consolidating its hold over the area.
According to the International Organization for Migration, 90,000 civilians have fled El-Fasher since it fell under paramilitary control.
Kifah, a woman in her 20s, was one of many who made the 770-kilometer journey from El-Fasher to Al-Dabbah displacement camp on foot.
The young woman, who is pregnant and was widowed in late October, said she was “exhausted by the lack of food and water.”
She was speaking to AFP journalists who were among a number of reporters taken on an army convoy to Al-Dabbah, about 100 kilometers from Merowe.
Since the fall of El-Fasher, where the army said thousands of people were killed in a single day, fighting has shifted to the neighboring Kordofan region.
The area is strategic because it connects the west of the country with the capital.
People who had fled El-Fasher described “sexual abuse, sexual assaults, especially of girls and young women. And they described that young men were often being shot on sight,” IOM chief Amy Pope told AFP.
Pope added that many are reporting much of the same kinds of violence in Kordofan, which has forced around 50,000 people to flee their homes.
“We need a ceasefire or humanitarian corridors so that the humanitarian organisations, the aid workers, can bring life-saving support to those who now don’t have access,” she said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday called for international action to cut off weapons to the RSF, saying any backers would face repercussions.
“I think something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and support that the RSF is getting as they continue with their advances,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates, a key US ally, has faced mounting accusations of backing the RSF — allegations Abu Dhabi denies.
Rubio declined to single out the UAE, but said: “It’s coming through some country and we know who they are and we’re going to talk to them about it and make them understand that it’s going to reflect poorly on them and it’s going to reflect poorly on the world if we can’t stop this.”
Mohieddin Salem, the Sudanese army-aligned government’s foreign minister, welcomed Rubio’s statement.
It “is time to hold Daglo’s militia accountable”, Salem said in a statement to official news agency SUNA, referring to RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.
He called on the international community to “avoid a repeat of the El-Fasher tragedy” in the besieged towns of Kordofan.
Clashes and fires have been recorded in recent days in the town of Babanusa, the last army stronghold in West Kordofan state, according to satellite imagery analysed by AFP and the Vista map tracking service.
The town has been under siege for several months, as have North Kordofan state capital El-Obeid and South Kordofan’s Kadugli and Dilling.
