Intense fighting in central Sudan displaces 2,000 people in just days, a UN agency says

CAIRO (AP) — Intense fighting in central Sudan displaced some 2,000 people over the past three days, the U.N. migration agency said Monday, the latest in a war that has convulsed the country for more than two years and killed tens of thousands.

The International Organization for Migration said the displaced fled from several towns and villages in the area of Bara in North Kordofan province between Friday and Sunday.

Kordofan has been one of two areas, along with the western Darfur region, that recently became the epicenter of the war between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The RSF capture of the key city of el-Fasher left hundreds dead and forced tens of thousands to flee to overcrowded camps to escape reported atrocities by the paramilitary force, according to aid groups and U.N. officials. The IOM said nearly 92,000 people have left el-Fasher and surrounding villages.

The war between the RSF and the military began in 2023, when tensions erupted between the two former allies that were meant to oversee a democratic transition after a 2019 uprising. The fighting has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, and displaced 12 million. However, aid groups say the true death toll could be many times higher.

In late October, RSF fighters launched attacks in the town of Bara in North Kordofan, killing at least 47 people, including women and children, the local aid group Sudan Doctors Network said at the time.

The IOM estimated that nearly 39,000 people had fled several villages and towns in North Kordofan since Oct. 26. They were mostly headed north, toward the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and the adjacent Omdurman region, as well as Sheikan in North Kordofan.

Also Monday, the RSF claimed its fighters entered the town of Babanusa in West Kordofan province and were heading toward the army headquarters.

Salah Semsaya, a volunteer with the local group Emergency Response Rooms, told The Associated Press that other volunteers from the town of Babanusa working with charity kitchens in the area reported a decline in the number of families coming to get food — apparently an indication that many had left or fled the area. Definitive figures could not be confirmed.

Darfur atrocities

In Darfur meanwhile, Sudan Doctors Network reported on Sunday that the RSF collected hundreds of bodies from the streets of el-Fasher and buried some in mass graves while burning others.

The RSF was acting in a “desperate attempt to conceal evidence of their crimes against civilians,” the network said.

Satellite images analyzed last week appeared to show the RSF disposing of bodies after they seized and rampaged through el-Fasher. Images by the Colorado-based firm Vantor show a fire at the Saudi hospital in el-Fasher on Thursday, near a collection of white objects seen days earlier in other Vantor photos.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab described the images as showing the “burning of objects that may be consistent with bodies.”