File Photo: UN peacekeepers patrol the Abyei area. Photo courtesy of UNMISS
Six Bangladeshi peacekeepers have been killed, and eight others were injured in "a terrorist attack” on a UN base, the Bangladeshi army has said.
In a statement on Facebook on Saturday, the Bangladeshi army said that the incident took place in Abyei and the fighting is ongoing.
There was no immediate comment from the UN mission.
Witnesses told AFP that the victims of the attack on the besieged South Kordofan state capital of Kadugli were UN employees.
"Six people were killed in a bombing of the UN headquarters while they were inside the building," the medical source at the city's hospital told AFP.
Eyewitnesses said a drone had struck the UN building.
Kadugli, where famine was declared in early November, has been besieged for a year and a half by the RSF.
Kordofan is a vast agricultural region split into three states. It lies between RSF-controlled Darfur in the west and army-held areas in the north, east and centre.
Its position is important for maintaining supply lines and moving troops.
The RSF militias, accused of crimes against humanity in Darfur and Kordofan, has waged war against the Sudanese National Army since April 2023.
On Friday, the UK imposed sanctions on senior commanders of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces suspected of "heinous violence" in the Darfur hub of El-Fasher, which the paramilitary group captured in late October.
The Foreign Office in London said those targeted include RSF second-in-command Abdelrahim Hamdan Daglo, whose brother Mohammad Hamdan Daglo is the group's leader, as well as three other militia commanders.
They are accused of "mass killings, systematic sexual violence and deliberate attacks on civilians" when the RSF dislodged the Sudanese army from El-Fasher, its last stronghold in the western Darfur region.
The US Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a transnational network that "recruits former Colombian military personnel and trains soldiers, including children," to fight for the RSF in Sudan.
"The RSF has shown again and again that it is willing to target civilians—including infants and young children," said Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley.
In November, rights group Amnesty International also accused Sudanese paramilitaries of committing war crimes in the Darfur town of El-Fasher.
Amnesty said it had collected testimonies from 28 survivors describing atrocities in El-Fasher ranging from the summary execution of unarmed men to the rape of girls and women.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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