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Key Points
- A UN report says more than 1,000 civilians were killed when militants seized a displacement camp in April.
- About one-third of the victims, at least 319 people, were summarily executed, according to survivor testimony.
- Survivors reported widespread killings, rape, torture, abductions, and attacks on civilians.
More than 1,000 civilians were killed when a Sudanese paramilitary group took over a famine-stricken displacement camp in Sudan’s Darfur region in April, according to a report by the United Nations’ Human Rights Office.
For months before the 11 – 13 April assault, the Rapid Support Forces blocked entry of food and supplies to the Zamzam camp, which had housed nearly half a million people displaced by civil war, according to the UN report released on Thursday.
During the takeover, the RSF directed attacks against civilians, the UN report said, and survivors reported widespread killings, rape, torture and abductions, with at least 319 people executed in the camp or as they tried to flee.
They then turned their attack on the camp’s last remaining medical clinic, killing nine aid workers, according to Relief International who ran the facility.
Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasized in a statement accompanying an 18-page report that “the intentional targeting of civilians or individuals no longer participating in hostilities could potentially be classified as the war crime of murder.”
The findings are based on interviews conducted in July 2025 with 155 survivors and witnesses who fled to Chad.
One of them testified that eight people hiding in a room in the camp were killed by RSF fighters who inserted rifles through a window and shot at the group, the report said.
Accusations have arisen from the United States and various human rights organizations against a paramilitary group, alleging that they have committed acts of genocide in the Darfur region.
