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Violence has raged for a third consecutive day at Zamzam and Abu Shouk displacement camps in western Sudan, as terrified residents describe the situation as “catastrophic” and “dire.”
At least 100 people, including 20 children and a medical team, have been killed in the attacks, according to the United Nations. The camps, home to more than 700,000 people who fled the civil war, have been targeted in what the UN and aid agencies are calling one of the worst escalations in recent months.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are being blamed for the assaults. Though the group claimed to have taken control of Zamzam on Sunday, it denied targeting civilians and labeled reports of atrocities as fabricated.
Survivors paint a starkly different picture. Mustafa, a resident who worked at a community kitchen inside Zamzam, said that many young people and aid workers had been killed.
“My uncle and my cousin were killed,” he said. “There’s no medicine, no hospital—people are bleeding to death. The camp is surrounded, and the shelling hasn’t stopped.”
Another resident, Wasir, spoke from a trench, saying, “Death is everywhere… we are still trying to leave, but all roads are blocked.”
North Darfur’s Health Minister confirmed that some residents had fled on foot toward el-Fasher, describing injured and exhausted people, many of them children and the elderly, arriving without food, shelter, or family.
International condemnation has been swift. The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, called the attacks “deadly and unacceptable.” The US and UK governments have echoed those concerns, with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy labeling the RSF’s actions as “shocking.”
Aid group Relief International reported the killing of nine staff members, including doctors and drivers, in what it called a targeted assault on health infrastructure. “This was not a random act,” said Sudan director Kashif Shafique. “They were executed in a bunker.”
The RSF has denied responsibility, accusing the Sudanese army of militarizing the camps and using civilians as shields. However, satellite imagery analyzed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab revealed widespread destruction and fires across large parts of the Zamzam camp.
The attacks coincide grimly with the second anniversary of Sudan’s civil war, a conflict that has displaced over 12 million people and created what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The war erupted on 15 April 2023, following a violent power struggle between the army and the RSF.
El-Fasher, the only major town in Darfur still held by government forces, remains under siege, as fighting intensifies and humanitarian access continues to collapse.
