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    Hundreds Killed in Days in Sudan as War Surges

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    Paramilitary forces ransacked villages and killed hundreds of people, activists said, hastening calls for the United Nations to deploy a mission to protect civilians.A major surge in fighting in Sudan has taken a searing toll on civilians, killing hundreds of people in aerial bombings and revenge attacks in the past week, as Africa’s largest war shifts into a higher gear after the end of seasonal rains.Territory has changed hands, a prominent commander has switched sides and retreating fighters have sexually assaulted, kidnapped and killed villagers as they have moved through contested countryside, according to activists, democracy groups and accounts on social media.A military cargo plane slammed into the desert in the western region of Darfur, with at least two Russian crew members on board, offering direct evidence of the growing role of foreign contractors in the fighting.And Sudan’s military, after losing control of vast areas of Sudan, has finally seemed to regain the advantage over the Rapid Support Forces, the powerful paramilitary group that it has been battling for the past 18 months. Both sides face a barrage of war crimes accusations from the United States and rights groups, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing.“The fighting season has just restarted, and both sides want to jostle for an early advantage,” said Kholood Khair, the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a policy think tank.The escalating violence comes against a vast tableau of suffering. Over 10 million have been forced from their homes, famine is raging and diseases like cholera and dengue fever are rapidly spreading.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Famine Declared in Darfur Region of Sudan

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      Experts who monitor global hunger rarely make an official declaration of famine, but they just sounded the alarm for more than half a million people who have fled the fighting in Sudan’s civil war.Famine has officially been declared in a city in Sudan’s Darfur region that has been under siege in the midst of the country’s 15-month long civil war, two organizations that monitor world hunger announced on Thursday.People who fled to a camp known as Zamzam near the city of El Fasher, in North Darfur state, have been facing famine since June, and no food aid is reaching them, prompting the official declaration, the agencies said. The Zamzam camp has grown recently and now holds about half a million people. An official declaration of famine is rare, and is intended to prompt a response from aid agencies and governments.This one shows how the war between rival military factions has plunged a fertile nation once considered a global breadbasket into a deepening hunger and humanitarian crisis.Two other camps in the city of El Fasher — Abu Shouk and Al Salam — were likely undergoing famine but limited evidence made it difficult to confirm, according to the two organizations — the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a research group funded by the United States government, and the Famine Review Committee, an independent group of experts.Experts use a strict methodology to classify famine. A famine is declared when 20 percent of households, or one in five people in an area, face an extreme lack of food, 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and two adults or four children for every 10,000 are dying every day from malnutrition or starvation.Famine is expected to last in these camps, which together host between 400,000 and 600,000 people, at least through October, the organizations said.The declaration of famine is the first in Africa since South Sudan’s in 2020. The group of experts also projected famine in Somalia in 2022 and in Gaza this year, but stopped short of officially declaring those emergencies to be famines.Sudan’s Darfur region has been the site of intense conflict and even massacres since the war between the country’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began on April 15 last year.But the situation in El Fasher had sharply deteriorated since April this year, when the paramilitary group laid siege to the city and ratcheted up attacks on surrounding villages. The escalating battle for the city entrapped many civilians, destroyed health care facilities and left communities without food or water. The conflict also damaged farmlands, limited the availability of food in the city’s markets and hindered access to humanitarian aid.Sudan is currently home to the world’s largest hunger crisis, according to the World Food Program. More than half of the country’s 48 million people are facing crisis levels of hunger, the U.N. agency said. Sudan is also facing the world’s worst displacement crisis, with more than 10 million people internally displaced or pushed to flee to neighboring countries. More

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      Drone Strike in Sudan Targets Army Leader in Failed Assassination Attempt, Military Says

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      For 15 months, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been leading a war for control of the country against his rival, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.Sudan’s army said two drone strikes hit an army base in the country’s east on Wednesday after a graduation ceremony attended by the country’s de facto leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has been locked in a civil war for over a year with a rival military general.At least five people were killed and several others injured in the attack in the town of Gebeit, the army said, which has been held by the army and is about 50 miles from its wartime capital of Port Sudan. The Sudanese army spokesman, Nabil Abdallah, told the BBC that General al-Burhan had survived an assassination attempt, and blamed it on the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has been battling the army for power for 15 months.A military spokesman could not be reached for comment. In statements posted on social media, the military did not say whether General al-Burhan had been hurt or where he was during the attack. But it posted videos showing him interacting with the soldiers and members of the public before and after the graduation ceremony.No group has claimed responsibility for the strikes. The paramilitary group’s media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The war between General al-Burhan and his rival, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, who leads the Rapid Support Forces, has devastated Sudan, one of Africa’s largest nations. More than 18,000 people have been killed, according to an estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, though aid workers estimate the death toll to be higher.At least 10 million people have been driven from their homes, according to the United Nations, while more than half the country’s 48 million people face hunger, and hundreds of thousands of others are facing a looming famine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More