UN Security Council urged to consider all options to protect Darfur civilians

CAIRO (AP) : An international watchdog has urged the UN Security Council to consider all options to protect civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region after the latest attacks killed hundreds of civilians.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has been at war against the Sudanese military since mid-April, when months of tension exploded into open fighting in Khartoum, and other urban areas.

In the first week of November, the RSF and their allied militias attacked the town of Ardamata, a few kilometers north of Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur, Human Rights Watch said.

After taking over a military base in Ardamata, the attackers rampaged through the camp for displaced people and other nearby residential areas that were all largely inhabited by the African Masalit tribe, according to the rights group.

People who fled Ardamata described a spree of killings, shelling, unlawful detentions, sexual violence, ill-treatment, and looting in the town, HRW said.

The RSF and their allied militias shot at civilians as they fled, and executed people in their homes, shelters, and in the streets, they said.

Mohammed Osman, HRW’s Sudan researcher, said the attack on Ardamata was the RSF’s “latest episode of ethnically targeted killings,” which bears the hallmarks of “an organized campaign of atrocities against Masalit civilians.”