{"id":20059854,"date":"2023-11-19T16:46:38","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T15:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dabangasudan.org\/?p=20059854"},"modified":"2024-03-03T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T08:50:10","slug":"six-days-of-terror-un-investigate-west-darfur-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dabangasudan.org\/en\/all-news\/article\/six-days-of-terror-un-investigate-west-darfur-massacre","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Six days of terror\u2019: UN investigates West Darfur massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Jeremy Laurence, on Friday voiced profound concern over disturbing reports emerging from West Darfur. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their allied Arab militant gunmen stand accused of perpetrating grave atrocities in Ardamata earlier this month. This marks another distressing instance of an ethnically motivated mass attack specifically targeting the non-Arab Masalit community.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Laurence, preliminary information obtained from survivors and witnesses by the UN suggests Masalit suffered \u201csix days of terror\u201d at the hands of the RSF and its allied militia after they took control of the Sudanese Armed Force\u2019s (SAF) base in Ardamata earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laurence explained that \u201cOn November 5 alone, 66 Masalit men were summarily executed in three separate incidents.\u201d other victims of the militia attacks were \u201cburnt alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands have been displaced, with many crossing the border to Chad. Over the past few months, dozens of women and girls were reportedly subjected to sexual violence.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe restate the call by High Commissioner Volker T\u00fcrk in June on the RSF leadership to unequivocally condemn and stop the killings, other violence and hate speech targeted at civilians, based on their ethnicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid worrying reports of an imminent RSF assault on El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, we remind them and all other parties to the conflict to respect their international humanitarian law obligations to ensure protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this week, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, expressed \u201calarm\u201d at the renewed escalation of violence<\/a> between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and affiliated militias in Darfur over the past two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As previously reported<\/a> by Radio Dabanga, the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric had announced that the United Nations was \u201ccurrently verifying credible reports\u201d of widespread violence against members of the Masalit community in Darfur, particularly in the El Geneina area, \u201callegedly perpetrated by Arab militia groups with possible complicity by the RSF between November 4 and 6\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These developments \u201cunfortunately indicate the escalation of ethnic tensions and tribal conflicts in Sudan\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ardamata attack is the second mass attack against Masalit people since the start of the war this year. Between May and June 2023, hundreds of Masalit men, women, and children \u2013 including the governor of West Darfur, Khamees Abakar \u2013 were killed.<\/a><\/p>\n