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United Nations officials have warned that fighters with the
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have rampaged through the
Darfur city of el-Fasher, reportedly killing more than 450
people in a hospital and carrying out ethnically targeted
killings of civilians and sexual assaults. While the RSF have
denied killing people at the hospital, those who have escaped
el-Fasher, satellite images and videos circulating social media
provide glimpses of what appears to be mass slaughter taking
place in the city.
At the Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, British
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Saturday spoke in grim words
about events in el-Fasher, where a paramilitary force known as
the Rapid Support Forces has seized the city.
“Just as a combination of leadership and international
cooperation has made progress in Gaza, it is currently badly
failing to deal with the humanitarian crisis and the devastating
conflict in Sudan, because the reports from Darfur in recent
days have truly horrifying atrocities,” Cooper said.
“Mass executions, starvation and the devastating use of rape as
a weapon of war, with women and children bearing the brunt of
the largest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century. For too
long, this terrible conflict has been neglected, while suffering
has simply increased.”
She added that "no amount of aid can resolve a crisis of this
magnitude until the guns fall silent.”
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul echoed Cooper's concern,
directly calling out the RSF for its violence in el-Fasher.
“Sudan is is absolutely an apocalyptic situation," Wadephul
said.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Sudan has not
received “the attention it deserves. A humanitarian crisis of
inhumane proportions has taken place there.”
"We’ve got to stop that,” he added.
Bahrain's government late on Wednesday rescinded an
accreditation for The Associated Press to cover the summit,
after a “post-approval review” of that permission. The
government did not elaborate on why the visa was revoked.
Earlier that day, the AP published a story on long-detained
activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja beginning an “open-ended” hunger
strike in Bahrain over his internationally criticized
imprisonment.
Al-Khawaja halted his hunger strike late on Friday after
receiving letters from the European Union and Denmark regarding
his case, his daughter Maryam al-Khawaja said.
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