Attacks by Sudanese RSF paramilitaries leave hundreds dead in White Nile State

100s dead in White Nile

Photo: The Canadian Press

This is a locator map for Sudan with its capital, Khartoum. (AP Photo)

Insurgent attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Force killed hundreds of civilians, including infants, in White Nile state, Sudanese officials and rights groups said Tuesday.

Sudan’s foreign ministry said in a statement cited by Egyptian state-run Qahera News TV that the paramilitary group targeted civilians within the past few days in the villages of the al-Gitaina area after they were “certain of their crushing defeat” by the Sudanese army. The statement put the death toll at 433, while the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union put that figure at 300.

Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence against civilians, said in a statement Tuesday morning that more than 200 people, including women and children, were killed in RSF attacks and hundreds of others were injured over the past three days.

“The attacks included filed executions, kidnapping, forced disappearance, looting, and shooting those trying to escape,” the group said.

Minister of Culture and Information Khalid Ali Aleisir said in a statement on Facebook early Tuesday that recent attacks by the RSF in villages located in the White Nile state are the latest “systematic violence against defenseless civilians.”

The war in Sudan, which began in April 2023, has killed more than 24,000 people and driven over 14 million people — about 30% of the population — from their homes, according to the United Nations. An estimated 3.2 million Sudanese have crossed into neighboring countries including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.