FILE PHOTO: A 15-year-old victim of sexual violence in El Geneina, West Darfur, is seen outside a makeshift shelter in Adre, Chad, August 1, 2023. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo
UNITED NATIONS/CAIRO — Between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in one city in Sudan’s West Darfur region last year in ethnic violence by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militia, according to a United Nations report seen by Reuters on Friday.
In the report to the United Nations Security Council, independent UN sanctions monitors attributed the toll in El Geneina to intelligence sources and contrasted it with the UN estimate that about 12,000 people have been killed across Sudan since war erupted on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese army and the RSF.
The monitors also described as “credible” accusations that the United Arab Emirates had provided military support to the RSF “several times per week” via Amdjarass in northern Chad. A top Sudanese general accused the UAE in November of backing the RSF war effort.
In a letter to the monitors, the UAE said 122 flights had delivered humanitarian aid to Amdjarass to help Sudanese fleeing the war. The United Nations said about 500,000 people have fled Sudan into eastern Chad, several hundred kilometers south of Amdjarass.
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Between April and June last year El Geneina experienced “intense violence,” the monitors wrote, accusing the RSF and allies of targeting the ethnic African Masalit tribe in attacks that “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The RSF has previously denied the accusations and said any of its soldiers found to be involved would face justice. The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Reuters.
“The attacks were planned, coordinated, and executed by RSF and their allied Arab militias,” the sanctions monitors wrote in their annual report to the 15-member Security Council.
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Reuters last year chronicled the ethnically targeted violence committed in West Darfur. In hundreds of interviews with Reuters, survivors described horrific scenes of bloodletting in El Geneina and on the 30-kilometer (18 mile) route from the city to the border with Chad as people fled.
The monitors’ report included similar accounts. They said that between June 14-17, 2023, some 12,000 people fled El Geneina on foot for Adre in Chad. The Masalit were the majority in El Geneina until the attacks forced their mass exodus.