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CAIRO: A paramilitary group fighting against Sudan’s military shelled a besieged city in the western region of Darfur, killing at least 24 people, a medical group said Thursday.
The Rapid Support Forces shelled the densely populated areas of the central market and Awlad al-Reef neighborhood in el-Fasher, the provincial capital of North Darfur province, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks the country’s civil war. The attack wounded 55 people, including five women, it said.
The city has been at the epicenter of fighting for over a year between the Sudanese military and the RSF. It is the military’s last stronghold in the Darfur region.
The RSF didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sudan plunged into a civil war in April 2023 when simmering tension between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the northeastern African country.
Wednesday’s shelling was the latest in a series of attacks on el-Fasher and its surroundings, including two famine-hit camps for displaced people where RSF fighters ran riot in April in a major offensive that killed hundreds of people.
In August, at least 89 civilians were killed in RFS attacks in and around the city in a span of 10 days, including 16 who were summarily executed, according to the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
The RSF besieged and turned it into “an epicentre of child suffering, with malnutrition, disease, and violence claiming young lives daily,” according to the United Nations children agency.
The siege left 260,000 civilians, including 130,000 children, trapped inside the city and living in “desperate conditions” after being cut off from aid for more than 16 months, UNICEF said in a statement Wednesday. An estimated 6,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and are at risk of death, it said.
The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, forced more than 14 million to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine swept parts of the country.
It has been marked by gross atrocities including ethnically motivated killings and rape, according to the United Nations and rights groups.
The International Criminal Court said it was investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

GENEVA: More food aid is reaching Gaza but it still remains far from enough to prevent widespread starvation, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) told Reuters on Thursday.
"We're getting a little bit more food in. We're moving in the right direction ... but it's not nearly enough to do what we need to do to make sure that people are not malnourished and not starving," WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain told Reuters in an interview via video link from Jerusalem.
McCain said the WFP is now able to deliver about 100 aid trucks per day into Gaza, but this figure still falls far short of the 600 trucks that were entering daily during the ceasefire.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into the enclave, was not immediately available for comment on McCain's remarks. A report released on Friday by the global hunger monitor, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said that approximately 514,000 people - nearly a quarter of Gaza's population - are currently facing famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas.
Israel has repeatedly dismissed such findings as false and biased in favour of Palestinian militant group Hamas, against which it has been fighting in its almost two-year war.
'UTTER DEVASTATION'
McCain, who visited Deir al Balah and Khan Younis this week - including a clinic supporting children and pregnant and lactating women - highlighted ongoing difficulties in delivering aid to vulnerable populations deep inside Gaza.
"What we saw was utter devastation. It's basically flattened, and we saw people who are very seriously hungry and malnourished," McCain said.
"It proved my point that we need to be able to get deep into it (Gaza) so we can make sure that they can consistently have what they need," she said.
She said that a modest improvement in getting commercial food and supplies into Gaza had helped prices fall, but said that most people still cannot afford food.
McCain said she is hopeful that the WFP will have better access to Gaza after meeting on Wednesday with the Israeli military's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, during which she pressed for unfettered access, more safe routes and guarantees that trucks would not face long delays after clearance is granted.
A military statement said Zamir emphasised Israel's commitment to preventing famine and enabling humanitarian aid to reach Gazans.
The IPC report also warned that famine could spread to the central and southern districts of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.
McCain described the IPC report as the "gold standard" for measuring food insecurity and urged for a scale-up of aid into the enclave.
Israel dismissed the report as "deeply flawed" and asked the IPC to retract it on Wednesday. The IPC had no immediate comment.