Eight dead in Sudan paramilitary attack on shelter

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed eight civilians in an attack on a bunker sheltering dozens in the besieged western city of El-Fasher, a doctor said Thursday.

Nearly all of Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan, remains under RSF control, with communications and media access cut off since the RSF's war with the army began in April 2023.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands, triggered the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis, and devastated the northeast African country.

"The RSF bombed a shelter where citizens had taken refuge using a drone, late on Tuesday night," the doctor told AFP from El-Fasher Teaching Hospital, one of the city's last functioning health facilities.

They spoke on condition of anonymity for their safety, as health workers have been repeatedly targeted, using a satellite internet connection to circumvent the communications blackout.

North Darfur state's capital, El-Fasher, is the only major city in Sudan's vast Darfur region still outside RSF control, despite a siege that began in May last year.

Since losing control of the capital Khartoum to the army in March, the RSF has stepped up attacks on El-Fasher and its surrounding displacement camps -- where famine has already been declared -- in an attempt to consolidate its hold on Darfur.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the plight of the city's trapped civilians, who shelter from shelling in makeshift bunkers dug in courtyards and in front of houses.

The bunker bombed on Tuesday had been "sheltering dozens of people", an eyewitness told AFP.

The city's resistance committee, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating frontline aid across the country, said El-Fasher was rocked by RSF artillery throughout Wednesday.

El-Fasher's estimated one million people survive with barely any access to food, water or healthcare, with critical infrastructure decimated by a lack of maintenance and fuel shortages.

The United Nations said this week that nearly 40 percent of children under five in El-Fasher were suffering from acute malnutrition, including 11 percent with severe acute malnutrition.

Aid sources say an official famine declaration is impossible given the lack of access to data, but mass starvation has all but gripped the city.

Since the war began, the UN estimates 780,000 people have been displaced from El-Fasher and its surrounding displacement camps, including half a million in April and May following a series of brutal RSF attacks.

Of the 10 million people currently internally displaced in Sudan -- the world's largest displacement crisis -- nearly 20 percent are in North Darfur.