OAN’s Noah Herring
5:15 PM – Thursday, July 13, 2023
Dozens of bodies allegedly killed by Sudanese paramilitary and allied militia have been found in a mass grave in West Darfur, according to the United Nations.
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According to information obtained by the UN Human Rights Office, the bodies of 87 people, including some from the ethnic African Masalit tribe, were buried in a three-foot grave outside the city of Geneina.
Sudan has been struck with violence since mid-April when tensions between the military and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into fighting.
Darfur has been one of the hotspots for conflict, transforming it into an arena of violence as the paramilitary troops and allied Arab militias attack the Masalit and other African ethnic groups.
According to the U.N. agency, 37 bodies were buried in the grave on June 20th. The next day another 50 bodies were dumped in the same grave. Seven women and children were among the bodies that were buried.
“I condemn in the strongest terms the killing of civilians and hors de combat individuals, and I am further appalled by the callous and disrespectful way the dead, along with their families and communities, were treated,” said Volker Türk, UN high commissioner for human rights.
An RSF senior official who opted for anonymity said that it “completely denies any connection to the events in West Darfur as we are not party to it, and we did not get involved in a conflict as the conflict is a tribal one.”
Over the past two months, the paramilitary and their allies have stormed across Wet Darfur, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, according to rights groups. Over 238,000 people have crossed the border into the neighboring country of Chad, according to the international Organization for Migration. Among the conflict, entire towns and villages in the province of West Darfur have been burned to the ground and looted.
West Darfur governor Khamis Abdallah Akbar, accused the RSF and allied militias of attacking local communities in an interview with Saudi-owned television station, Al-Hadath. Hours later, he was abducted and killed. It is unclear who killed him and for what reason.
Sudan’s army spokesperson, Brig Gen Nabil Abdullah, told Reuters that the discovery of the mass grave “rises to the level of war crimes and these kinds of crimes should not pass without accountability.”
“This rebel militia is not against the army but against the Sudanese citizen, and its project is a racist project and a project of ethnic cleansing,” Abdullah said.
The ethnic killings have raised fears of a repeat genocidal war that took place in Darfur in the early 2000’s where Janjaweed militias, which eventually formed into the RSF, helped the government destroy a rebellion, killing approximately 300,000 people.
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