File Photo: A still from a video released by the Rapid Support Forces showing its fighters celebrating in El Fasher, western Sudan. AFP
The RSF militia has been at war with the Sudanese government and army since April 2023, and has committed repeated massacres against Darfur's non-Arab ethnic groups, including the Zaghawa who inhabit the western villages of North Darfur state.
According to the UN's migration agency, more than 3,500 people were displaced on Friday from one village alone, Wadi Fungo in the Um Baru locality of North Darfur.
Issa Ibrahim, 35, told AFP that dozens of RSF vehicles stormed his village of Um Marahik last week.
"They sent artillery through homes, they burned to the ground and people died on the street with no one to bury them," he said, after sending his wife and children across the border into Chad.
"We passed by two villages, Oruwa and Ana Baji, that were burned entirely. Bodies lay on the ground."
Mohamed Adam, 43, said two of his brothers were killed in the attack on their village of Qarboura, where fighters "burned down homes and killed everyone who couldn't run away".
The two survivors spoke to AFP on Monday after reaching the border town of Al-Tina, using a satellite internet connection to circumvent a communications blackout.
Last year, the RSF militia captured El-Fasher -- the final stronghold of the Sudanese government and national army in Darfur -- in an assault that a UN inquiry stated bore the 'hallmarks of genocide' against the city's Zaghawa population.
Amnesty International last week reported the RSF had committed ethnic cleansing in the attack.
Since pushing west, the militia has attacked enclaves controlled by the Joint Forces -- a coalition of government-allied Sudanese armed groups whose members are also predominantly Zaghawa.
Since the war broke out, the UN, rights groups and survivors have repeatedly reported RSF war crimes, including besieging and razing displacement camps, systematic sexual violence and ethnic massacres.
The militia group descends from the Janjaweed militia who, armed and funded by the Khartoum government, killed more than 300,000 people in Darfur in the 2000s.
The Sudanese army has also been accused of failing to protect Darfur's towns and displacement camps from RSF violence.
Since April 2023, the RSF has been at war with Sudan's government and military forces. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, with aid estimates surpassing 200,000, while precipitating the world's worst hunger and displacement crises.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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