The ongoing civil war in Sudan has claimed tens of thousands of lives since it began on April 15, 20232.
Estimates vary widely, with some sources suggesting over 24,000 deaths, while others believe the toll could be as high as 150,000.
On April 15, 2023, a bitter power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into all-out war.
More than 13 million people have been uprooted, creating what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst hunger and displacement crises.
In Khartoum alone, more than 61,000 people died during the first 14 months of war, among them 26,000 from direct violence, according to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Washington’s former Sudan envoy, Tom Perriello, said in May last year some estimates for the overall death toll were as high as 150,000.
Hunger is tightening its grip, with famine declared last year in five regions across the country, including three major displacement camps in Darfur and parts of the south.
According to the United Nations, eight million people are currently on the brink of all-out famine, while nearly 25 million – around half the population – face acute hunger.
The war has “shattered the lives of millions of children across Sudan,” said Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, which estimated 2,776 children had been killed or maimed in 2023 and 2024.
In recent days, the RSF has launched a series of brutal assaults on camps for internally displaced persons—most notably the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps—as well as on residential neighbourhoods within El Fasher.
Around 450 civilians -IDPs- have been killed so far, including children and women, during these attacks. Among the victims were 9 humanitarian workers and medical staff.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Sudan on Monday expressed its profound concern and unequivocal condemnation of the continued campaign of terror and genocide being waged by the RSF against civilian populations in and around the city of El Fasher.
“These heinous acts constitute a blatant violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2736 and a grave breach of international humanitarian law, particularly the provisions enshrined in the Geneva Conventions regarding the protection of civilians in armed conflict,” it said.
Britain’s foreign ministry said more than 30 million people were in desperate need, and 12 million women and girls were in danger of gender-based violence.
Sudan entered its third year of war on Tuesday, with no sign of respite for war-weary civilians.
For a year and a half, the RSF rampaged across western and central Sudan, and the army retreated to the east, relocating the government from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
In November 2024, the army, its ranks replenished and its arsenal rebuilt, launched an offensive from the east, retaking central Sudan.
In March, Burhan announced the capital Khartoum was “free” of the RSF, cementing his upper hand.
The RSF has since ramped up its attacks in Darfur, launching a fierce assault on El-Fasher – the last state capital in the vast western region still held by the regular army.
Full paramilitary control of Darfur would cement the partition of Sudan, with the army holding the north and east and the RSF holding the west and, with its allies, parts of the south.
‘RSF should be designated a terrorist group’
Speaking with Daily Trust, the media officer at the Sudanese Embassy in Nigeria, Almoiz Mohamed, said the RSF had continued to bombard Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps with heavy artillery, supported by a “barbaric ground attack”.
He said the group also executed nine relief workers inside their offices in Zamzam camp, in addition to thousands of wounded and critically ill others.
“Tens of thousands marched towards the city of El Fasher on foot, where they face complex humanitarian conditions in the absence of the simple elements of life, including food, drink and medicine,” he said, stressing that the RSF’s attacks were in response to the crushing and successive defeats that they continued to receive from the armed forces on the outskirts of the city of El Fasher.
Al Moiz said the killings of displaced civilians were criminal acts, calling on the international community to condemn the acts.
The Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, therefore, called on “sisterly and friendly nations, regional and international organisations, and the international community at large to denounce these atrocities in the strongest possible terms and to stand resolutely with the people of Sudan in these critical times.”
Furthermore, the Ministry reiterates the demand that the RSF militia be designated a terrorist group, its regional sponsors and backers be called out and compelled to stop supplying the militia with the weapons, ammunition and mercenaries that it uses to pursue “its campaign of genocide in Darfur”.
The UK led international calls Tuesday for a swift end to the devastating war in Sudan, hosting a gathering of world officials with fresh pledges of humanitarian aid as the conflict, which has cost thousands of lives, entered its third year.
Germany and France, as well as the European Union and the 55-member African Union, are co-hosting the conference with the British government in London.
Ministers from some 14 other countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United States, were attending, the Foreign Office said, along with high-level representatives from bodies such as the United Nations.
“We simply cannot look away,” the UK’s foreign minister David Lammy said as he opened the talks among counterparts from around 15 countries, denouncing what he called “a lack of political will” to end the fighting.
“We have got to persuade the warring parties to protect civilians, to let aid in and across the country, and to put peace first,” he said, adding it would take “patient diplomacy”.
Various peace efforts have so far failed to lead to a ceasefire.
The continued fighting has fuelled fears that the tensions will spill over Sudan’s borders and stir further instability in the impoverished Horn of Africa region.
“There can be no military solution in Sudan, only an immediate, unconditional cessation of hostilities,” said the African Union’s commissioner for political affairs, Bankole Adeoye.
“This, we believe, must be followed by an all-inclusive dialogue to end the war.”
Lammy unveiled 120 million pounds in new aid for Sudan, with the EU pledging more than 522 million euros to address the crisis, and Germany putting up some 125 million euros.
France also announced an extra 50 million euros in humanitarian aid this year.
“How can we forget the world’s largest humanitarian crisis?” asked German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
During a visit to a refugee camp, she said she heard “horrific reports of women and children being raped” while people were dying of hunger.
