War crimes during the Sudanese civil war (2023–present)
Notable victims include Adam Zakaria Is'haq, a physician and human rights advocate, and Khamis Abakar, the governor of West Darfur, who was kidnapped, tortured, and executed.
[31][32] In contrast, the Tamazuj movement joined forces with the RSF, while the Abdelaziz al-Hilu faction of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North attacked SAF positions in the south of the country.
Aerial bombings and artillery fire targeted hospitals while patients were inside, and medical personnel were singled out for attacks, all constituting potential war crimes.
[58] On 1 August, the Doctors' Hospital, northwest of Khartoum Airport, partially collapsed due to shelling, with the RSF accusing the SAF of targeting the facility in airstrikes.
[2][66] Actress Asia Abdelmajid,[113] singer Shaden Gardood,[114] former football player Fozi el-Mardi and his daughter,[115] and Araki Abdelrahim, a member of the music group Igd al-Jalad, were killed in crossfire.
[17] Josep Borrell, the European Union's chief of foreign policy, strongly condemned the killing of over 1,000 individuals in Ardamata and called on the international community to take immediate action to prevent a potential "genocide" in the area.
[153] Attacks on villages surrounding Kutum began on June 9, with the mayor of Farouk town Mohamedein Bektum being executed by RSF fighters after refusing to give up his car key.
[160][161] These attacks have led to significant loss of life, with hundreds of residents killed and thousands injured or displaced, including many who fled to Chad seeking safety.
[161][162] Forty-two people, mainly women and children, were killed in an airstrike on 23 August 2023, while they were sheltering under Taiba bridge in Nyala, South Darfur, as most exits and entrances to the city were blocked off.
Nyala-based journalist Ahmed Gouja stated that the Taiba bridge massacre was not the only one in the city during the renewed fighting, but that the others were impossible to reach or get information about due to the clashes.
[167] Médecins Sans Frontières stated that all of their staff in Nyala were unable to leave, and were subject to their homes being stormed by fighters and civilians used as human shields.
[163] By early September, the el-Texas, el-Karari, and the southern parts of the city were the fiercest battlegrounds, with residents stating that much of Nyala was a ghost town due to indiscriminate shelling and RSF intrusions into civilian homes.
[218] According to UNICEF and the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Tirana Hassan, the ongoing conflict has led to mass displacement of people, creating crowded conditions in refugee camps and other temporary settlements.
[229] In August 2023, the UN Human Rights Council ought to commence an inquiry and establish methods to safeguard evidence regarding the violations, while governments invested in the matter should allocate additional resources to aid survivors of sexual assault.
[240] The RSF was accused of assaulting civilians and going on a rampage of looting and burning in Khartoum,[241] Nyala, Geneina,[242] and other parts of the country,[243] including Merowe,[241] and Kubum and Markondi in South Darfur.
[244] Residents in Khartoum State[245] and Nyala, South Darfur[246] expressed concerns about widespread theft and pillaging, coupled with the complete lack of police presence and law enforcement.
[129] On 14 May 2023, Adam Zakaria Is'haq, a 38-year-old physician and human rights advocate, was murdered along with 13 patients at the Medical Rescue Centre in El Geneina's Jamarik neighbourhood.
Adam was providing medical care at a small clinic when he was killed, as the main hospital in El Geneina had been previously destroyed by the same armed militia and RSF in late April.
These arrests are part of a broader strategy to suppress civil society actors, which includes limiting access to aid and obstructing the arrival of relief.
[274] On 1 October 2024, the Al-Bara' ibn Malik Battalion, an Islamist-affiliated militia allied with the SAF, of killing 70 youth soup kitchen volunteers in Halfaya, Khartoum Bahri, for allegedly collaborating with the RSF.
[281] BBC journalist Mohamed Othman was reportedly attacked and beaten in Khartoum while a correspondent and cameramen for the El Sharg news outlet were detained for hours near Merowe airport on the first day of the fighting on 15 April 2023.
[284] Sudan TV photographer Esam Marajan was shot dead inside his home in the Beit El Mal neighbourhood of Omdurman in the first week of August.
[286] Sky News Arabia reported, in 2024, on conscription of hundred of children between the age of 12 and 14 at a military camp near Shendi, River Nile State as part of the Popular Resistance of Sudan.
[13] In his report to the UNSC on 29 January 202, he expressed that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that crimes outlined in the "Rome Statute" are currently taking place in the "unstable western region".
[300] In September 2023, the United States, Britain, Norway, and Germany planned to propose a motion to the UN Human Rights Council for an investigation into the alleged atrocities in Sudan.
[301] On 11 October, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 19–16 with 12 abstentions to adopt a resolution creating a fact-finding committee on crimes and violations in Sudan since the start of the conflict.
[302] Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for robust measures to address the ongoing atrocities, urging the United States to take action at the UN Security Council to protect civilians and hold those responsible for the violence accountable.
In her speech before the Security Council Committee, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Representative to the United Nations, commented: "It is my hope that the sobering report will at long last shake the world from its indifference to the horrors playing out before our eyes.
It goes on to say that there is "clear and convincing evidence" that Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Russia via the actions of the Wagner Group are "complicit in the genocide.
"[10] In January 2025, the U.S. government has officially accused the RSF for committing genocide, imposing sanctions on the group's leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and asset freezes and a travel ban.
