Geneva (BLAZETRENDS) Paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FAR).
According to evidence obtained by the UN, the residents were forced to place the bodies in the grave, denying the victims a dignified funeral in the local cemetery.
The FAR have been facing each other since last April with the Sudanese Army, in a conflict that has its main foci in the capital Khartoum, and in the Darfur region, bordering Chad.
The massacre would have been committed between June 13 and 21 and the perpetrators would be members of the FAR and militias that support them in the dispute for power that confronts them with the Army, with which they had previously collaborated in a coup d’état which ended in 2019 with the democratic transition in which Sudan was believed to be embarking.
For their part, Save the Children staff fleeing the town of Al Geneina reported today that they have seen “the bodies of hundreds of people, including children, abandoned along the road, covered in flies”.
The UN calls for an investigation
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, demanded that the RSF leaders stop these killings and end all actions aimed at inflaming hatred against certain ethnic groups.
“I am appalled by the lack of respect in the way the dead, their families and communities are treated. There must be a full investigation into these murders and the perpetrators must be punished,” he added.
Among the corpses there are seven that correspond to women and an equal amount to children.
The UN indicated that it has credible information indicating that several of the victims died in the wave of violence that followed the assassination of the governor of Western Darfur while he was detained by the paramilitary group.
According to the indications, several died because they were not allowed to receive medical attention.
Türk asked the FAR and other groups associated with them to allow the collection of the remains and their evacuation to give them a proper burial.
For this, he also asked them to record all the information related to the victims, in order to identify them and return their remains to their families, and that in case they do not agree to do so, allow humanitarian workers to comply with this task.
Egypt agrees to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid
On the other hand, the Egyptian president, Abdelfatah al Sisi, affirmed today that his country will work with the competent humanitarian agencies to “facilitate the passage of aid” from Egyptian territory to Sudan, since the vast majority has been delivered by sea and air through other nations, mainly from the gulf.
He also presented a new initiative consisting of three points to ask the parties to the conflict in Sudan “an immediate ceasefire, the start of negotiations to reach a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire”, as well as the creation of a contact group between neighboring countries.
According to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the number of refugees who have fled the violence in Sudan to other neighboring countries now exceeds 700,000.