Over 1,000 Were Killed in Attack on Famine-Stricken Camp in Sudan, U.N. SaysParamilitaries in Sudan killed over 1,000 people, one-third of them in summary executions, in an attack in April against a famine-stricken camp for displaced people, the United Nations human rights body said on Thursday.
The revised toll was over three times as great as earlier estimates from one of the most notorious episodes of Sudan’s atrocity-filled civil war.
The slaughter occurred over three days in April in the western region of Darfur as R.S.F. fighters seized control of the sprawling Zamzam camp, the largest in Sudan. At the time, about 500,000 people were estimated to live in the camp.
Most residents fled. In the report published on Thursday, the United Nations said its investigators had since documented the killing of 1,013 people, 319 of whom were summarily executed. In one incident, fighters killed the entire staff of the largest medical clinic in the camp. They also set homes on fire and carried out widespread sexual violence.
The United Nations said in its report that it had documented 104 cases of sexual assault — against 75 women, 26 girls and three boys, mostly from the Zaghawa ethnic group.
The United Arab Emirates has ramped up its support for the R.S.F. even as it has repeatedly denied providing any assistance to the group, according to Western officials and analysts who follow the crisis. At the same time, Emirati officials are stepping up efforts to present themselves as peace brokers in Sudan, meeting and posing for photos with the same American, European and United Nations officials who have decried R.S.F. atrocities.
Advanced Chinese-made drones, most likely supplied by the Emirates, are playing a significant role in those gains, Western officials and military analysts say.
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