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After a ceasefire failed in Sudan’s capital, two weeks of fighting between the country’s army and paramilitary groups has fueled renewed violence in Darfur, a region scarred by two decades of genocidal conflict that has left 300,000 dead.
A ceasefire scheduled to end on Sunday night collapsed on Saturday as the capital Khartoum came under artillery fire and airstrikes. But attention has now focused on the Darfur region, where a security vacuum has emerged that diplomats and other observers fear could lead to civil war.
Armed groups in Darfur have looted health care facilities and burned down homes, while markets have burned. Civilians there have begun arming themselves against marauding militias and fighting the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese Army.
“The tension and fighting we are facing, could lead to civil war,” said Ahmed Gouja, a human rights monitor based in Nyala, Darfur’s largest city.
Sudan’s wider conflict between two warring factions has left more than 500 people dead and 4,500 injured since fighting erupted in Khartoum on April 15. , Chad and Ethiopia.
On Saturday, a convoy of buses carrying American citizens from Khartoum arrived in the city of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. Many other civilians remain trapped in Khartoum and other violent areas, often close to the feared Rapid Support Forces.
But in Darfur the fighting has also created a security vacuum that militias and armed tribes have exploited, raising fears of widespread and brutal conflict in a region that has faced a wave of indiscriminate attacks on civilians in recent years.
In West Darfur in recent years, Arab communities have mobilized alongside the Rapid Support Force and carried out attacks against non-Arab African groups, including the Masalit group, said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. In return, Masalit has gathered weapons and organized himself into a self-defense militia, he said.
Tensions have been simmering for decades between Arab and ethnic African groups in Darfur, an area the size of California. But the most recent instability began in the early 2000s, when the country’s former dictator, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and the Sudanese military recruited Arab fighters, known as the Janjaweed, to crush non-Arab groups rebelling against the state.
A widespread campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing. About 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million others were displaced, according to the United Nations. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into the genocidal violence, indicting Mr al-Bashir on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2009.
The Janjaweed transformed in the 2010s into the Rapid Support Forces, a group that is now fighting its former ally, the Sudanese military.
The group’s leader, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, commonly known as Hemeti, is from Darfur, and analysts fear he may try to flee his home region if the Sudanese military defeats its forces in Khartoum.
The scale of violence has varied in Darfur since the conflict erupted this month. Nyala, in South Darfur, and El Fasher in the north were hit by heavy fighting in the first days of the conflict. But in recent days, the fighting has receded in both areas and in Nyala a local civil committee has sprung up to implement a ceasefire, Mr. Ahmed said.
“The dynamics in Nyala and El Fasher are similar to those in Khartoum,” said Mr. Mohamed of Human Rights Watch. “Rapid Support Forces fight Sudanese Armed Forces, and civilians are caught in the crossfire.”
The situation is even more alarming in West Darfur, particularly in the town of Geneina, where the United Nations and aid groups have reported the killing of at least 100 civilians.
On Thursday, the Sudanese Army fought with the Rapid Support Forces and militias attacked several neighborhoods in the city, according to Idriss Hassan al-Zahawi, a local civil society observer. “The conflict there has acquired a social dimension,” Mr al-Zahawi said in a voice message, referring to growing tensions between Arab and ethnic African groups.
One of the main hospitals in the area has been looted, and staff from Doctors Without Borders, who work in the hospital, cannot reach it. The group must cease most of its activities in West Darfur, it said in a statement.
More than 20,000 people have crossed from Darfur into neighboring Chad since the start of the conflict, according to the United Nations, and another 3,000 have taken refuge in the Central African Republic.
But humanitarian organizations are predicting a sharper influx of refugees in the coming weeks, with the United Nations saying as many as 270,000 people could cross into Chad and South Sudan if violence and fighting continue.
“Families who fled have brought everything – furniture, beds – as if they cannot return, at least in the short term,” said Jérôme Merlin, deputy country director for Chad at the UN High Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs. Rights, the refugee agency, which visited the border area earlier this month.
Natural Aida and Declan Walsh contribute reports.
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