At least 104 people, including dozens of children, have been killed in a gun and artillery attack by Sudanese paramilitary forces on a village in the country’s main agricultural region, pro-democracy activists said.
The exact circumstances of the attack, which took place on Wednesday in Wad al-Nura, a village 70 miles south of the capital, Khartoum, remain disputed.
But the high death toll and images of Thursday’s mass graves circulated on social media and reviewed by The New York Times drew international condemnation, making the attack the latest flashpoint in Sudan’s brutal, year-long war.
“Even by the standards of the horror of Sudan’s conflict, the images emerging from Wad al-Nura are heartbreaking,” Clementine Nkweta Salami, the top U.N. official in Sudan, said in a statement.
“The world is watching,” said British Foreign Secretary David Cameron. wrote on social media“Those responsible will be held accountable.”
Yet there has been little accountability despite the numerous atrocities committed since Sudan was plunged into a deadly civil war just over a year ago when fighting erupted between the army and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.
With phone lines down in Jazeera state, where Wad al-Noura is located, Sudanese are relying on videos and explanations by local activists to make sense of the recent mass casualties.
Video shared online and located by The Times showed at least five Rapid Action Force vehicles lined up on a road about a half-mile from Wad al-Nura on Wednesday.
Armed men standing behind a stationary vehicle can be seen firing machine guns towards a village across a plain. The video plays for about five minutes amid incessant gunfire.
The video’s narrator says residents had blocked the access to the village to prevent the fighters from reaching it. There is no indication that the fighters were shot.
but, Another video Footage from inside the village of Wad al-Nourra suggests the village has put up some sort of armed defence, and the video shows residents calling for help as gunfights break out outside the village.
“The village is under siege,” the man said. “Save Wad al-Nura.”
The local Resistance Committee, part of a national network of pro-democracy groups, called the incident a massacre and posted a video on Thursday showing at least 50 bodies being wrapped in cloth and buried in the village.
The videos and photos were reviewed by The Times and the Sudan Witness Project, a nonprofit organization run by the Information Resilience Center, which monitors the conflict and documents potential war crimes.
The Resistance Committee said at least 104 people were killed and blamed the army for failing to save them: “The people of Wad al-Nura appealed to the army to rescue them but, shamefully, the army did not respond.”
The Rapid Support Force disputed this account, acknowledging in a statement that its forces had opened fire on Wad al-Nourra but said they had been attacking military positions around the village and had lost eight soldiers in the fighting.
UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement she was “horrified” by reports that at least 35 children have been killed and 20 injured in the violence, and called on warring parties to abide by international law.
Sudanese army commander, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, visited villagers injured in the attack on Thursday. Speaking at a hospital in the nearby town of Al-Managir, he said the Sudanese army would take a “harsh approach” to the RSF for the killings.
The village lies in an agricultural region that was once the breadbasket of Sudan but is now a vast battlefield.
In December, the RSF captured Wad Madani, the capital of Jazeera state, as part of a series of stunning victories against the Sudanese army.
In recent months, the army has been trying to retake Jazeera with a major counteroffensive, and Wad al-Nura is about 20 miles from the front line of that fighting.
In western Darfur, the RSF has besieged El Fasher, the last Sudanese army stronghold in Darfur, raising fears that all-out war in the city could lead to genocide and worsen a hunger crisis that aid workers say could spiral into famine.
The RSF receives weapons and other support from its main foreign sponsor, the United Arab Emirates, according to American and U.N. officials. On Thursday, the United States imposed new sanctions linked to the Sudan conflict. 7 companies based in the United Arab Emirates.
Abdulrahman Altayeb contributed reporting from Port Sudan, Sudan. Video: Edited by Ainara Tiefenthaler
