RSF actions in Sudan's al-Fashir points to genocide, UN probe says

Mass killings of non-Arab communities when the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group captured the Sudanese city of al-Fashir bears hallmarks that point to genocide, an independent UN probe said in a new report on Thursday.



At the end of October last year, the RSF took over the city - which had been the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the Darfur region in the west of the country - with thousands of people killed and raped during three days of horror, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan said.



It followed an 18-month siege where the RSF imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of non-Arab communities, in particular the Zaghawa and the Fur.



The U.N. mission said it found evidence that the RSF carried out a pattern of coordinated and repeated targeting of individuals based on ethnicity, gender and perceived political affiliation, including mass killings, rape and torture, as well as inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction - core elements of the crime of genocide under international law.