More than 800 Sudanese reportedly killed in attack on Darfur town, UN says
CAIRO — Fighters from a paramilitary force and their allied Arab militias rampaged through a town in Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur, reportedly killing more than 800 people in a multiday attack, doctors and the U.N. said.
The attack on Ardamata in West Darfur province earlier this month was the latest in a series of atrocities in Darfur that marked the monthslong war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, RSF.
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Sudan has been engulfed in chaos since in mid-April, when simmering tensions between military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open warfare.
The war came 18 months after both generals removed a transitional government in a military coup.
The military takeover ended Sudan’s short-lived fragile transition to democracy following a popular uprising that forced the overthrow of longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
In recent weeks the RSF advanced in Darfur, taking over entire cities and towns across the sprawling region, despite the warring parties’ return to the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia late last month. The first round of talks, brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, failed to establish a cease-fire.
The dayslong attack in Ardamata came after the RSF took over a military base in the town after a brief fighting on Nov. 4 with troops there, said Salah Tour, head of the Sudanese Doctor’s Union in West Darfur.
