At least 22 killed in RSF attack on Sudan’s al-Fashir, group says

A pro-democracy group said Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed at least 22 people in an attack on the city of al-Fashir in the western Darfur region on Saturday, though the paramilitary force denied launching an assault.

The al-Fashir Resistance Committees said on Facebook that the RSF had fired artillery shells on markets, hospitals and apartments in a surge of violence after weeks of stalemate on that front in the country’s civil war.

The activist group also said the RSF used a drone to target a hospital.

It later said a total of 97 people were killed or injured in the assault.

The RSF dismissed the report and said it did not clash with the army or allied groups in al-Fashir.

The city is the national army’s last remaining position in the Darfur region, and a key front in its war with the RSF that has turned Sudan into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 300 000 people have fled their homes in al-Fashir as a result of fighting that began in April, the United Nations has said.