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A picture taken on June 16, 2023 shows bodies scattered outdoors near houses in West Darfur state’s capital El Geneina, amid ongoing fighting between two generals in war-torn Sudan.
CNN –
The United Nations human rights body (UNJHRO) has received reports of at least 13 mass graves in the Sudanese town of El Geneina, a special envoy for the war-torn country told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
According to UN envoy Volker Perthes, the mass graves are said to contain civilians from the Masalit ethnic tribe who were killed in attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militias.
Perthes, who announced his resignation as U.N. special envoy to Sudan, added that the human rights violations were being documented and “if verified could potentially constitute war crimes.”
Ethnically motivated killings have become increasingly common since fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF in mid-April.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Masalit tribe and other non-Arab communities in Sudan are frequently attacked by Arab militias supported by the RSF.
A report released in July by the human rights organization found that at least 28 ethnic Masalit were executed by the RSF and its allied militias in an attack on Misterei, a village in El Geneina where thousands of Masalit residents live.
Experts have expressed concern that the recent ethnic-based killings are an aftermath of the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed during an ethnic cleansing campaign by an Arab militia then known as Janjaweed.
The recent discovery of mass graves containing members of the Masalit tribe is the second such discovery this year.
In July, at least 87 people, mostly ethnic Masalite, were discovered in a mass grave in Al-Madaress and Al-Jamarek districts of El-Geneina. The U.N. human rights office said they may have been killed a month earlier by the RSF and its allied militias.
Last week, the United States imposed sanctions on RSF deputy leader Abdelrahim Dagalo over human rights violations after a series of CNN investigations exposed the group’s brutal war strategies.
The Sudanese military government also issued a decree disbanding the RSF, citing, among other things, the rebellion and “the serious violations they have committed against citizens.”
Fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF escalated in the country’s capital Khartoum, leaving at least 5,000 dead and over 12,000 injured, according to the UN.
At least 43 people were killed on Sunday after an airstrike hit a market in southern Khartoum, a Sudanese doctors’ union said. Another 32 civilians were killed days earlier in a similar attack in Omdurman, also in Khartoum.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than four million people have fled violence across Sudan, more than half from the capital alone.