Dozens of people were killed in the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher early Friday when paramilitary forces fired a missile into a mosque during morning prayers, local medics and aid workers said.
The strike was among the deadliest in months in El Fasher, in the western region of Darfur, where the paramilitaries have intensified a brutal, nearly 18-month siege by bombing neighborhoods where tens of thousands of hunger-stricken civilians are sheltering.
At least 84 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of the mosque, including several women and children, said Suleman, a senior doctor at the nearby Al Saudi hospital, who spoke by phone after visiting the site. The Emergency Response Rooms, a local aid group, put the toll at 75.
“The scene was harrowing beyond description,” said the doctor, who asked to be identified by one name to protect his family from reprisals.
A missile hit the Al Jamia mosque during early morning prayers, when it was packed with worshipers, the doctor said. Videos circulating on social media of the aftermath, showing bloodied bodies trapped under rubble and steel girders, were accurate, he said.
“I saw all of this and more,” he said.
Among the dead was Omar Selik, a doctor who spoke with The New York Times last week about the dire conditions for an estimated 260,000 civilians trapped in El Fasher, trying to survive bombardment in a city with vanishingly little food. His death was confirmed on Friday by a relative and by Suleman.
Malnourished children were eating food normally given to camels and donkeys, Dr. Selik told The Times during a video call on one of the few satellite connections left in the city. He turned the camera to show his own meal, a plate of the same sludgy paste.
“There’s nothing else,” he said.
The siege is led by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military since the country was engulfed by civil war in April 2023. After being ejected from the capital, Khartoum, in March, the R.S.F. has fallen back on its stronghold of Darfur, where many of its fighters come from.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, is its last hurdle to complete control of the region.
After the Times story published on Monday, Dr. Selik sent a text message to say that R.S.F. bombing had intensified around his home, which is situated less than a mile from an embattled contingent of Sudanese military forces and allied fighters. “Now we are under attack again,” he wrote. “Too much killing of people.”
In May, R.S.F. fighters began to build an earthen wall around the city that is now 20 miles long, and partially encircles it. They have prevented food and medicine from entering El Fasher and beaten or shot dead some civilians who tried to flee.
Colombian mercenaries are fighting alongside the R.S.F. in El Fasher, according to videos posted to social media and the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro. “They are specters of death,” he said in a social media post last month.
Earlier this month, U.N. human rights investigators said that R.S.F. atrocities in El Fasher amounted to crimes against humanity.
The R.S.F. recently announced that it had formed its own government in Nyala, 110 miles south of El Fasher, led by its leader Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan. The paramilitaries did not respond to questions for this article.
Satellite photos and other evidence indicate that the R.S.F. now controls most of El Fasher, the Yale School of Public Health reported on Thursday. A battle was raging around a former U.N. peacekeeping base where ethnic militias fighting alongside Sudan’s military had established a base, researchers said.
The R.S.F. advance is being backed by advanced, Chinese-made armed drones, some of which appeared to be captured in satellite images taken over El Fasher on Thursday.
Citing witnesses, Suleman of the Al Saudi hospital said an R.S.F. drone had fired on the mosque on Friday morning. “Right now, the drone is still moving in the sky,” he said. “I can see it.”
The United Arab Emirates, the main foreign backer of the R.S.F., has supplied its fighters with artillery, medical care and Chinese-made drones, some of which have been used in the siege of El Fasher, the Times has reported. Sudan’s government has accused the U.A.E. of hiring the Colombian mercenaries fighting alongside the R.S.F. in El Fasher.
The U.A.E. denies backing either side in the war.
“Those thugs have declared repeatedly that they intend to wipe us out,” Taha Khater, an aid worker in El Fasher, said in a text message on Friday, referring to the R.S.F.
He added: “Please, we are dying before the eyes of the whole world and no one is speaking up,”
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