Warnings are mounting that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) could carry out new mass atrocities as the paramilitary army prepares an assault on the government-held city of El Obeid in North Kordofan state. After the UN secretary-general and human rights chief sounded the alarm earlier this month, the African Union and several governments this week also warned of the extreme danger facing civilians if the UAE-backed rebels capture the city. The warnings have drawn comparisons with El Fasher and the nearby Zam Zam displacement camp in Darfur, which saw general massacres after they fell to the RSF last year. Reports suggest the RSF has moved substantial reinforcements to its siege of El Obeid, while stepping up drone strikes on the city. A crossroads linking RSF-controlled Darfur with government-held Sudan, El Obeid was under RSF siege until the Sudanese Armed Forces broke the blockade last year, but it is now being encircled once again.

A company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has hired and transported hundreds of Colombian private military contractors to Sudan to fight for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released May 25.

Amnesty International on May 19 demanded the removal of a commander of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), known by his nom de guerre "Abu Lulu," citing war crime allegations against him. Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, Tigere Chagutah, stated:

It is alarming to learn he has returned to combat without any investigation into the allegations. The RSF leadership must remove Abu Lulu from the battlefield and from their ranks immediately, and he must be investigated for the war crime of wilful killings.

The rights organization also called for the RSF to end attacks on civilians and allow them safe passage to flee the ongoing violence.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on May 11 issued a high alert on the widening use of drones in the conflict in Sudan. Türk warned that unless the international community takes action without delay, the conflict in Sudan could enter a new, even deadlier phase.

The Sudan team at the Human Rights Office found that upwards of 80% of all civilian deaths from January to April—numbering at least 880—can be attributed to drone attacks. These include attacks on May 8 that killed 26 civilians in Al Quz, South Kordofan, and near El Obeid, North Kordofan.

Sudan's paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have repeatedly attacked the Darfur border town of Tina, with more than 123 injured people arriving at a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières near the Chad frontier last week. A drone strike—with responsibility still unclear—also killed 17 people on the Chadian side of the border. Tina has been hosting large numbers of displaced Darfuris fleeing RSF attacks elsewhere. (TNH)

The UN Human Rights Office published a report on Dec. 18 detailing its findings of atrocities committed during a three-day assault by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan's Darfur region.

Satellite imagery analysis reveals widespread evidence of systematic mass killings and body disposal by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El Fasher, Sudan, following the paramilitary group's capture of the North Darfur state capital in late October, according to a report released this week by Yale University researchers.

​​In a move that will shock absolutely nobody following the war in Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) declared a three-month unilateral humanitarian truce on Nov. 24—and then promptly broke it with an attack on an army position in the West Kordofan town of Babanusa. RSF leader Hemedti billed the pause as a first step towards a political solution, but it looks like just another attempt to con mediators and journalists. As ever, those attempts have been drowned out by a stream of grim revelations, including reports that RSF fighters forcibly took blood from civilians fleeing El Fasher—prompting one commentator to label them "literal vampires." A Doctors Without Borders update found that many of the 260,000 civilians still alive in El Fasher before the RSF takeover on Oct. 26 are now dead, detained, trapped, or unable to access lifesaving aid.