U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday urged an immediate halt to the escalating violence in Sudan following reports that paramilitary forces killed more than 460 people in a maternity hospital.
Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries, which recently seized the city of el-Fasher from army forces, has vowed the country would be unified by "peace or through war."
The capture of el-Fasher, the last army holdout in the vast western region of Darfur, comes after more than 18 months of brutal siege, sparking fears of a return to the ethnically targeted atrocities of 20 years ago.
Accusations of mass killings have mounted, with the World Health Organization (WHO) condemning reports that 460 people were killed at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, the last partially functional hospital in el-Fasher.
The WHO said the hospital was on Sunday "attacked for the fourth time in a month, killing one nurse and injuring three other health workers."
Two days later, "six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted" and "more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital," the organization said.
Guterres said in a statement he was "gravely concerned by the recent military escalation" in el-Fasher, calling for "an immediate end to the siege & hostilities."
International powers have struggled for months to mediate an end to the fighting between the paramilitaries and the regular army, raging since April 2023.
Daglo's paramilitaries now control most of western Sudan, Africa's third-largest country, while the regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan dominates the north, east and center.
While the army regained full control over the capital Khartoum in March, the RSF has set up a parallel administration in the southwestern city of Nyala.
Analysts warn that the country is now de facto partitioned and may prove very hard to piece back together.
Daglo said in a speech Wednesday that he was "sorry for the inhabitants of el-Fasher for the disaster that has befallen them" and that civilians were off limits.
The RSF – descended from Janjaweed militias that attacked non-Arab communities in Darfur two decades ago – has again been accused of carrying out ethnic genocide against civilians, with graphic videos circulating on social media.
Sudanese Arabs are the dominant ethnic group in the country, but the majority in Darfur are from non-Arab communities such as the Fur people.
The Sudanese government has accused the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians and targeting mosques and Red Crescent aid workers in the city.
Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab said Tuesday that satellite imagery showed "mass killing events" with "corroboration of alleged executions around Saudi Hospital and a previously unreported potential mass killing at an RSF detention site at the former Children's Hospital in eastern el-Fasher."
It said there was also ongoing "systematic killing" at one location outside the city.
The lab had warned earlier of a "systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing" of non-Arab communities.
The seizing of el-Fasher has left the RSF in control of a third of Sudan, with fighting now concentrated in the central Kordofan region.
On Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported five Sudanese volunteers killed and three missing in Bara, a city in Kordofan captured by the RSF last week.
More than 33,000 people have fled el-Fasher since Sunday for the town of Tawila, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) to the west, which has already welcomed more than 650,000 displaced people.
AFP images from Tawila showed displaced people, some of them with bandages, carrying their belongings and setting up temporary shelters.
Around 177,000 people remain in el-Fasher, which had a population of more than 1 million before the war.
Access routes to el-Fasher and satellite-based communications in the city remain cut off – though not for the RSF, which controls the Starlink network there.
Sudan's war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis.
The so-called Quad group – comprising the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – held talks over several months towards securing a truce.
But those talks have reached an impasse, an official close to the negotiations said, with "continued obstructionism" from the army-aligned government.
While diplomats have preached peace, outside powers, including Quad members, have been accused of interfering in the conflict.
