Sudan's Rapid Support Forces kill 40 people in North Darfur displacement camp attack
The Emergency Response Rooms group working at the Abu Shouk displacement camp said in a statement on Facebook that the RSF — which is at war with the Sudanese military — raided parts of the camp targeting citizens inside their homes. The community activist group, which provides assistance across Sudan, said at least 19 people were also injured.
The Abu Shouk displacement camp outside of el-Fasher, which houses around 450,000 displaced people, has been repeatedly attacked over the course of the war. The Sudanese military has control over el-Fasher despite frequent strikes by the RSF.
Meanwhile, the Resistance Committees in el-Fasher confirmed the attacks, saying on Facebook that the scene 'reflected the extent of the horrific violations committed against innocent, defenseless people.' The Resistance Committees are a group of local citizens from the community that includes human rights activists.
The civil war in Sudan erupted in April 2023 in the capital Khartoum before spreading across the country following simmering tensions between the RSF and the army. The fighting has killed over 40,000 people, displaced as many as 12 million and pushed many to the brink of famine. The Abu Shouk camp is one of two camps with strong famine conditions, according to humanitarians.
The Sudanese army said it clashed with RSF fighters on Monday in el-Fasher beginning at around 6 a.m. and ending in the afternoon. It claimed it defeated the paramilitary group, according to its posts on social media.
'Our forces repelled a large-scale attack from several axes by the terrorist militia and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy in lives and equipment, as more than 16 combat vehicles were destroyed and burned and 34 vehicles, including armored cars, were captured,' the army claimed in a statement.
There was no mention of the fight on the RSF's Telegram channel.
Darfur Gov. Mini Arko Minawi said on Facebook that el-Fasher 'triumphed over those who betrayed their land' in an apparent reference to the RSF in Monday's fight.
Meanwhile, in North Kordofan province the RSF has been accused of displacing over 3,000 families from 66 villages due to fighting since early August, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. The group also said the RSF looted the properties of those people and stole their money and livestock. Those displaced ended up arriving at Khartoum and White Nile provinces last week.
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Live Updates: Zelensky Heads Back to White House, Facing Hard Choice From Trump
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Mr. Putin has initially presented the invasion as the defense of the region's pro-Russian separatists, who had fought against the government in Kyiv with the Kremlin's military and financial support since 2014. That pledge makes control of the Donbas a crucial condition for Mr. Putin to declare the job done in Ukraine, said Konstantin Remchukov, an editor in Moscow with Kremlin ties. Image People in Luhansk turned out to show support for Russia's stated annexation of four regions of Ukraine in 2022, including Luhansk. Credit... EPA, via Shutterstock Mr. Remchukov and other Kremlin commentators have speculated that Mr. Putin may be willing to trade other occupied territory to get the rest of the Donbas. 'Donetsk is perceived as way more 'ours' than Dnipro, Sumy or Kharkiv,' said Sergei Markov, a Moscow-based political scientist and former Kremlin adviser, referring to Ukrainian regions with a limited presence of Russian troops. What are Putin's claims based on? The Donbas has been contested since Ukraine first emerged as a state in the early 20th century, when Ukrainian nationalists, Communists and Russian monarchists battled for the region's industrial riches in a chaotic period after the Bolshevik Revolution. Most of the region's population was Ukrainian until Stalin's campaigns of forced industrialization and terror led to the migration of Russian workers to the region's coal mines and factories, mass killing of Ukrainian farmers and the suppression of Ukrainian language. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, about two-thirds of residents of the Donbas considered Russian their first language, according to census data. Russian cultural identity and the language became even more dominant during the first decades after Ukrainian independence. About 90 percent of Donbas voters cast ballots for Viktor F. Yanukovych, a pro-Russian candidate, in Ukraine's 2010 presidential election. The toppling of Mr. Yanukovych, then president, by protesters in Kyiv four years later led Mr. Putin to seize Crimea from Ukraine and engineer an insurgency in the Donbas. The insurgency created an anti-Russian backlash in the region. In Ukraine's last presidential election, in 2019, the Ukrainian-held part of Donbas voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Zelensky, a Russian speaker who promised to bring peace without sacrificing Ukrainian sovereignty. Mr. Putin, meanwhile, was turning to increasingly bellicose nationalism to try to rally domestic support after years of economic stagnation. His propaganda machine tried to rally Russians to the cause of the Donbas, a path that eventually led to a full-scale war. These propaganda efforts never achieved wide appeal in Russia. An independent poll conducted a few days before the invasion found that just a quarter of Russians supported bringing Donetsk and Luhansk into the Russian Federation. Image Obstacles in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, intended to slow the advance of Russian forces in November. Credit... Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Will Putin stop at the Donbas? Mr. Putin has periodically alluded to annexing other parts of Ukraine, leading Ukrainian officials and many Western politicians and analysts to argue that the war would continue after Russia takes the Donbas, whether by force or diplomacy. Their views are shared by Russian nationalists and many Russian soldiers, who have called on Mr. Putin to carry on fighting for the rest of the land in the two other annexed regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Other pro-war commentators have said Russia would keep fighting until toppling the government of Mr. Zelensky and installing a more pliant one. Many independent analysts, however, doubt whether Russia has the economic and military resources to press its offensive much farther beyond the Donbas. The Russian economy is stagnating, and its revenues are falling. This will make it difficult for the Kremlin to maintain the current pace of the fighting into the next year without significantly reducing the Russians' living standards. Mr. Putin's authoritarian rule and weakening economic outlook may persuade him to settle for the Donbas, at least for now, according to some analysts. 'Russian society is in such a deplorable state that it would be willing to accept almost any outcome of the war,' said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian politics expert at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. 'We can imagine various degrees of discontent from certain marginal segments of society — 'ultra-patriots' and the likes of them — but the Kremlin can manage it.' Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Berlin, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.
