Arab Militias Massacre 800 Black Africans As Ethnic Tensions Reignite In Sudan
Fighters from a paramilitary force and their allied Arab militias rampaged through the town of Ardamata whose indigenes are mainly black Africans 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.
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. He said the military withdrew from the base, adding that around two dozen wounded troops fled to Chad.
Spokespeople for the military and the RSF didn’t respond to phone calls seeking comment.
After seizing the military base, the RSF and their allied Arab militias rampaged through the town, killing non-Arabs inside their homes and torching shelters housing displaced people, Tour said.
The RSF and Arab militias launched attacks on Geneina, including a major assault in June that drove more of its non-Arab populations into Chad and other areas in Sudan.
The paramilitary group and its allied Arab militias were also accused by the U.N. and international rights groups of atrocities in Darfur, which was the scene of a genocidal campaign against black Africans the early 2000s.
Such atrocities included the rape and gang rape of black African women in Darfur, but also in the capital, Khartoum. Almost all reported cases were blamed on the RSF.
