14 members of the same family were killed in a bombing of a displaced persons camp in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur, according to a local volunteer rescue group on Saturday, which blamed paramilitary forces for the attack.
The Abou Shouk camp, located near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, is experiencing famine like other parts of the country, according to the UN. El Fasher remains the only provincial capital in Darfur not under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The local committee stated that “Abou Shouk was targeted by intense RSF shelling on Friday night,” resulting in the deaths of 14 Sudanese family members and injuring several others.
This camp houses tens of thousands of people who fled violence from successive conflicts in Darfur and the ongoing war tearing apart Africa’s third-largest country by area since 2023.
In recent weeks, the RSF has bombarded the camp multiple times with artillery.
Abou Shouk is near the Zamzam camp, which the RSF seized in April following a devastating offensive that almost emptied the camp, according to the UN, which had sheltered nearly a million displaced persons.
The conflict for control of the Sudanese government erupted on 15 April 2023 between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF, led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Paramilitary attacks in both Darfur and Port Sudan—the temporary seat of the Sudanese government in the east—have intensified since the army reclaimed the capital Khartoum in late March.
The war has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, uprooted 13 million people, and triggered “one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters,” according to the UN.
