Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killed at least 15 and injured a dozen more in a drone strike on September 23 on a market in North Darfur state’s capital city, El Fasher.
Abu Qurun station market was among the last functioning in the city, cut off from food supply from outside for over 500 days, under siege by the RSF.
Famine – which first broke out in August 2024 in the camps for the Internally Displaced People (IDP) on the outskirts – is now closing in on the city itself, hastened by RSF’s bombing of its markets.
With El Fasher’s other main markets destroyed, the Abu Qurun station market on the outskirts near the Abu Shouk IDP camp had become a critical trading hub.
RSF’s drone strike in the early hours of Tuesday has “completely destroyed” it, eyewitnesses told Sudan Tribune. “There is nothing left. Every market in the city is now out of service,” a resident of the city told Radio Dabanga.
Casualties in the attack were rushed to the Saudi hospital, which is among the last healthcare centers still functioning in the city. En route to supply clean water to its patients and 8,500 of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people, a water tanker of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was struck by a drone on September 20.
“With El Fasher under siege, such attacks are cutting families off from safe water at a time when child malnutrition and disease are surging. Displaced families and hospitals now depend almost entirely on water trucking,” it said in a statement.
“This is the third UNICEF-supported truck targeted in the past three months, putting both humanitarian staff and lifesaving supplies at grave risk.”
Residents told Darfur24 the following day that the city had been cut off from all sources of water. “Without it, many will be forced to turn to unsafe sources, further exposing children to deadly waterborne disease,” UNICEF warned.
Read More: Thousands suffer cholera with no medical care in war-torn Sudan’s Darfur
A cholera outbreak has been reported from all 18 states of Sudan. Nearly half of all the cases in the five states in the western region of Darfur are concentrated in Tawila, ravaging its IDP camps to whose relative safety the besieged, starving people under bombardment in El Fasher and its camps are fleeing.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that at least 7,500 fled from the city between September 17 and 19, mainly from its Abu Shouk IDP camp, which the RSF stormed into on September 15.
After fierce fighting with the armed groups allied with the army, the RSF reportedly established positions in the camp and advanced further into the city, all the way to the barracks of the Sixth Division of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) by September 19.
Routed from the remaining four states of Darfur, the SAF and its allied groups repelled the RSF, defending its last foothold in the region. However, the RSF attacks continued, killing 75 people, including 11 children, with a drone strike on a mosque near the camp on September 19, before targeting the last standing market on September 23.
The “past RSF takeovers” of other parts of Darfur “have been marked by mass displacement, widespread sexual violence, and ethnically targeted killing,” Refugees International warned.
“Local Sudanese and international humanitarian actors on the ground warn that the same is imminent in El Fasher.”
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