The U.N. rights chief said Monday that atrocities in Sudan's el-Fasher last October were a "preventable human rights catastrophe," warning that they risk being repeated in Kordofan.
Giving the U.N. Human Rights Council an update on the situation in el-Fasher, Volker Türk decried the horrific scenes after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) unleashed a "wave of intense violence," following 18 months of brutal siege.
"Thousands of people were killed in a matter of days, and tens of thousands fled in terror," he said, stressing the need to "hold those responsible accountable, and to make sure this never happens again."
Ahead of closed-door U.N. Security Council meetings on Sudan, British deputy envoy to the U.N. James Kariuki said that "this deliberate cruelty is designed to exacerbate an already insufferable situation. Starvation must never be used as a weapon of war."
The Sudanese regular army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, with the conflict killing tens of thousands of people, displacing millions more and triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said that during a recent visit to Sudan, he had heard first-hand accounts from survivors of the el-Fasher violence, and had "rarely seen people so traumatised."
"They consistently reported mass killings and summary executions of civilians both inside the city and as people fled," Türk said.
"Survivors also spoke of seeing piles of dead bodies along roads leading away from el-Fasher, in an apocalyptic scene that one person likened to the Day of Judgment," he said.
He maintained that "sexual violence was systematically used as a weapon of war by the RSF," and said his staff had also documented the recruitment and use of children by the RSF.
Türk said his office's findings were consistent with the International Criminal Court assessment that "both war crimes and crimes against humanity" had taken place in el-Fasher.
While the RSF was responsible for the atrocities committed in el-Fasher, he insisted that the international community had a responsibility to "do better".
"If we stand by, wringing our hands while armies and armed groups commit well-flagged international crimes, we can only expect worse to come," he warned.
Türk said he was currently "extremely concerned that these violations and abuses may be repeated in the Kordofan region", where fighting has intensified since the capture of el-Fasher in the neighbouring Darfur region.
In just over two weeks leading up to Feb. 6, Türk said his office had documented "some 90 civilians were killed and 142 injured in drone strikes."
The strikes, which were carried out by both the RSF and the Sudanese army, "struck a World Food Programme convoy, markets, health facilities and residential neighborhoods in South and North Kordofan," he said.
Kariuki, speaking for Britain which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council, said in New York that "we condemn recent drone strikes across Sudan, including a reported RSF attack on the WFP, a World Food Programme aid convoy on Friday, which killed an aid worker, and another attack in North Kordofan, which killed 24 people, including eight children."
Britain had imposed new sanctions against six individuals suspected of committing atrocities and fueling conflict through the supply of mercenaries and military equipment, he said.
