Conflict monitors and a witness reported on Monday that the paramilitary force fighting the Sudanese army had gained control of a town in South Darfur, sparking fighting, looting, and a fresh wave of displaced people.
According to a tracking system established by the International Organization for Migration, fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army in the area of Kas had forced up to 5,000 households to escape, some of them from displaced persons’ camps.
The RSF’s stronghold and territory already afflicted by protracted conflict, Darfur, has seen an increase in ethnically motivated violence and displacement as a result of the combat that broke out between the army and the RSF in the capital Khartoum.
In the course of the ongoing violence, the RSF said on Sunday that it had taken possession of an army base in Kas, seized weapons and vehicles, and imprisoned 30 troops.
An activist group that tracks the conflict, the Darfur Bar Association, denounced what it called an RSF attack on Kas that resulted in theft and looting.
A witness named Alfadil Mohamed told newsmen that there had been violent battles in the town that had resulted in at least three fatalities and the eviction of inhabitants to the east.
The RSF and its troops are believed to have carried out the targeted demolition of at least 26 settlements in Darfur, forcefully displacing at least 668,000 inhabitants, since mid-April, according to a study released on Friday by the US-based Sudan Conflict Observatory.
It said that the attacks, which targeted non-Arab groups predominantly, followed a similar pattern to those carried out by the Sudanese government and its allies the Janjaweed militias in 2003–2004, when they battled to quell a revolt and perpetrated atrocities on a massive scale.
From the Janjaweed militias, the RSF grew into a sizable, well-resourced fighting force with legal standing. It has claimed that the current violence in Darfur against civilians was tribal and that it was not involved.
More than 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict, which broke out amid disagreements over a proposed transition to civilian authority. More than 700,000 of these refugees have entered neighboring nations.
The army reported that on Saturday and Sunday, the RSF attacked the Aliaa military hospital in Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s twin cities. Fighting has persisted in the capital.
The hospital, which serves both military and civilian patients and is a part of a vast military complex, had been housing other notable inmates, including former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was moved there from prison before to the start of the conflict. No new information regarding Bashir’s whereabouts was provided by the army.