ICC says atrocities in Sudan's el-Fasher may qualify as war crimes
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors announced they are working to preserve evidence from last week's rampage through a besieged city in Darfur, carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group engaged in conflict with Sudanese army troops.
The alleged atrocities in famine-hit el-Fasher “are part of a broader pattern of violence that has afflicted the entire Darfur region” and “may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the ICC statement said, noting the evidence could be used in future prosecutions, News.Az reports citing France24.
The RSF captured el-Fasher last week after besieging it for 18 months. Witnesses have reported RSF fighters going house to house, killing civilians, committing sexual assault and killing children in front of their parents.
According to the World Health Organization, gunmen killed at least 460 people at a hospital and abducted doctors and nurses.
Details have been slow to emerge as communications are poor and the total death toll remains unclear.
The fall of el-Fasher heralds a new phase of the brutal two-year war in Africa’s third-largest country. The ICC’s chief prosecutor told the UN Security Council in January there were grounds to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.
The US adviser for African affairs, Massad Boulos, told the AP in an interview on Monday that the US is working with the Sudanese army and RSF to bring about a humanitarian truce and could have an announcement “soon”.
“We were working on this for the last almost 10 days with both sides, hoping to finalise the details," Boulos said. The US-led plan would start with a three-month truce followed by a nine-month political process, he said.
The US has been working for months with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, known as the Quad, on ways to end the war.
“The atrocities that we’ve seen, of course, are totally unacceptable,” Boulos said of videos showing RSF and allied gunmen committing atrocities against civilians including beatings, killings and sexual assault.
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