Central Reserve Police headquarters overrun in heavy fighting
UN human rights report details attacks on the Masalit
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked the headquarters of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)-aligned Central Reserve Police in Khartoum on Saturday and continued their assault Sunday morning.
After heavy fighting that lasted hours, RSF captured the base, or at least most of it, taking possession of dozens of Shareef-2 armored vehicles, huge amounts of ammunition, and more than 100 pickup trucks.
We already published two threads on Twitter detailing these events, one about the fighting Saturday and another about the fighting Sunday. Because of the labor involved in reformatting those threads for Substack, we will not duplicate that content here. The threads contain maps, videos, and analysis.
Note that one of the tweets in the second thread illustrates the incredibly primitive conditions of military hospitals in Sudan’s combat zones, and raises the possibility that war crimes were committed when the hospital was captured.
The capture of the Central Reserve base is the first major setback for the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) since the counteroffensive that they launched June 11 after receiving reinforcements in Khartoum. SAF supporters had hoped that that these reinforcements would change the momentum of the war in SAF’s favor, but instead the offensive stalled within days. SAF then halted their offensive completely for a 3-day ceasefire June 18-20, and since then they have been again mostly on the defensive.
Anecdotally, the capture of the Central Reserve base appears to mark a turning point in public sentiment. Even some of the army’s most ardent supporters are voicing growing frustration with military leaders about the conduct of the war, rather than just the typical triumphalism and glorification of the armed forces.
This is a viral meme that was circulating yesterday. The mother in the image is labeled “army,” the daughter is “Omdurman,” the son is “Khartoum,” and the skeleton underwater is “(Khartoum) Bahri.”
The meme implies that the army does not have a handle on the situation and isn’t able effectively to fight the RSF in all three cities. Although this spread widely, anyone who shares such a meme is still liable to be accused of defeatism.
Men fleeing El Geneina murdered for their ethnicity
The UN Human Rights Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani issued a strongly worded statement Saturday “raising alarm on killings of people fleeing El Geneina in West Darfur” toward the Chad border. She stated:
Interviews with people who have fled El-Geneina, West Darfur, into Adre in Chad have revealed horrifying accounts of armed “Arab” militia backed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killing people fleeing El Geneina on foot. Our UN Human Rights officers have heard multiple, corroborating accounts that “Arab” militia are primarily targeting male adults from the Masalit community. All those interviewed also spoke of seeing dead bodies scattered along the road – and the stench of decomposition. Several people spoke off seeing dozens of bodies in an area referred to as Shukri, around 10km from the border, where one or more of the Arab militias reportedly has a base.
Out of 16 people we have so far been able to interview, 14 testified that they witnessed summary executions and the targeting of groups of civilians on the road between El-Geneina and the border – either the shooting at close range of people ordered to lie on the ground or the opening of fire into crowds. The testimonies recounted killings that took place on 15 and 16 June, but also in the past week. We understand the killings and other violence are continuing and being accompanied by persistent hate speech against the Masalit community, including calls to kill and expel them from Sudan.
One 37-year-old man said that from his group of 30 people fleeing to the Chad border, only 17 made it across. Some were killed after coming under fire from vehicles belonging to the RSF and “Arab” militia near the Chad border, while others were summarily executed, he said. Those who survived had their phones and money looted from them by armed men shouting: “You are slaves, you are Nuba”.
The full text of her statement is available here.
Separately, the UN Security Council issued a brief statement Friday after a briefing from OCHA and closed-door consultations. They issued press remarks afterward, read to the press by Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, the president of the Security Council and permanent representative of the United Arab Emirates.
He remarks lasted less than one minute. The UN Security Council did not publish the statement on its website, nor did UN News do any article about the meeting.
Nusseibeh stated, “Council members expressed concern regarding the ongoing fighting and underlined their support for the work of UN humanitarian organizations, UN implementing partners, and the ICRC. They called for the respect for international humanitarian law and scaling up humanitarian assistance to Sudan and neighobrhoing states. The fighting has to stop and civilians must be protected.”
Quick Hits
Elsewhere, the following developments are worth noting:
El Fasher is experiencing power outages due to a scarcity of fuel, according to Darfur 24.
Nyala suffered a power outage due to a downed power line between the power plant and a distribution station. The power company’s director in the state Engineer Muhammad Al Hafiz wrote an apology to the citizens stating that the maintenance team were trying to fix the problem, but they had been hindered by the fear of bullets and armed clashes.
The Arabic-language fact-checking service Eekad Facts has published an analysis of the social media accounts of the RSF and what appear to be unnatural levels of growth and engagement on these accounts. Eekad observed that the RSF Twitter account gained “tens of thousands of new followers during the days preceding the war.” From that they deduced, “whoever runs the account had prior knowledge of the military escalation before it occurred and worked to inject fake followers.”
Survivors of an RSF attack in Tawila in North Darfur have offered video testimonies of their flight from the village.
The Al Aushara Resistance Committees reported that the RSF detained an entire family in Block 1 of the neighborhood and held them as hostages at gunpoint, demanding that they pay an amount of 10 million pounds. The committees demanded their immediate release.
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