West Darfur governor abducted, killed as war in Sudan spreads

World
By William

West Darfur state governor Khamis Abakar has been killed following a TV interview in which he accused paramilitary fighters of killing large numbers of civilians and called for international intervention.

A regional governor has been killed after publicly blaming the deaths of civilians on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid an expansion of the country’s nearly two-month-old war into cities in the western part of the country. country.

West Darfur state governor Khamis Abakar was killed on Wednesday, an armed group he led said, hours after accusing the RSF and allied fighters of “genocide”.

Details of his death were not available, but the Reuters news agency reported that two government sources said the RSF was responsible for the killing.

The Sudanese military also took to social media to accuse the RSF of “kidnapping and murdering” the governor. The killing had added a “new chapter” to the “list of barbaric crimes committed by the RSF against the entire Sudanese people,” the military said on Facebook, calling the incident a “cruel act”.

The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Darfur region governor Mini Arko Minawi said the slain provincial governor of West Darfur was kidnapped and killed hours after he gave an interview to a television station.

Abakar had told Al Hadath TV earlier on Wednesday that civilians were being killed and international intervention was needed.

“Civilians are being killed indiscriminately and in large numbers,” he had said.

Video footage circulating on social media late Wednesday appeared to show a group of armed men, some in RSF uniforms, holding Abakar. Other clips purportedly showed the governor lying on the ground with wounds to his neck and face.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that the conflict in Sudan has displaced more than 2 million people and that escalating attacks in Darfur could amount to “crimes against humanity”.

In el-Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur, RSF and allied fighters have rampaged through the city over the past week, killing and wounding hundreds, according to local activists and UN officials. Activists and residents of el-Geneina also reported that dozens of women were sexually assaulted in their homes and as they tried to flee the fighting. Almost all of the rape cases were attributed to the RSF, which has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Volker Perthes, the UN envoy to Sudan, said on Tuesday that the situation in Darfur was deteriorating and he was alarmed by the situation in El-Geneina, which had taken on an “ethnic dimension”.

“There is an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identity, reportedly perpetrated by Arab militias and some gunmen in Rapid Support Force [RSF]”s uniform,” Perthes said in a statement.

“These reports are deeply disturbing and, if verified, could amount to crimes against humanity,” he said.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, also condemned “the shocking violence” in el-Geneina.

She warned in a statement on Tuesday that such fighting could turn into “renewed campaigns of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing amounting to atrocities”.

Darfur was the scene of a genocidal war in the early 2000s, when ethnic Africans revolted and accused the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination. Former President Omar al-Bashir’s government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab fighters known as the “Janjaweed” who targeted civilians. Millions were displaced and an estimated 300,000 were killed in attacks blamed on “Janjaweed” fighters, which later evolved into the RSF and became a legalized government force in 2017.

In a statement, the RSF called the fighting in el-Geneina a tribal conflict and accused the country’s former regime of fanning the flames. It said it had made efforts to get help into the city.

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