(Addis Ababa) The African Union called on Tuesday for an “immediate cessation” of fighting in the large Sudanese city of El-Facher (southwest), denouncing an “escalation” of the crisis after an assault this weekend by paramilitary forces.
Since April 2023, the war has pitted the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, against the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
The President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, “calls for an immediate cessation of fighting inside and outside El-Facher,” the statement said.
For months, the fate of El-Facher has worried the international community. In this metropolis of two million inhabitants, the only capital of the five Darfur states not in the hands of the FSR, “hundreds of thousands of civilians” are threatened by “mass” violence, the UN warned last week.
Paramilitaries launched an offensive this weekend after months of siege.
Moussa Faki Mahamat strongly condemns “the current escalation of the crisis and the spread of violence” in the city. He more generally expresses his “concern over the deterioration of the security situation in all provinces of Sudan.”
According to Mr. Faki Mahamat, “there can be no military solution to the crisis in Sudan,” and the fighting “only prolongs the suffering of the Sudanese people.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by reports of a “large-scale” FSR offensive, urging General Daglo to “act responsibly and immediately give the order to stop the attack.”
Paramilitaries have been besieging the metropolis since May and in recent months the violence has killed hundreds of people, according to the NGO Doctors Without Borders.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilians, indiscriminately shelling residential areas and looting or blocking vital humanitarian aid.
In September, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a death toll of at least 20,000 since the start of the conflict, but some estimates go as high as 150,000 victims, according to the American envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello.
More than ten million people have also been displaced by the fighting or forced to seek refuge abroad – one in five Sudanese.