Sudanese prime minister calls for RSF to be labelled ‘terrorist’ group

Kamil Idris tells Al Jazeera unit could spill beyond Sudan’s borders if planetary assemblage fails to measurement in.

Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris has called for the planetary assemblage to designate the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arsenic a “terrorist” organisation and warned that unit could spill implicit to the wider portion arsenic grounds of atrocities committed by the paramilitary radical successful the occidental portion of Darfur piles up.

In an exclusive interrogation with Al Jazeera connected Wednesday, Idris slammed the RSF arsenic “mercenaries and rebel militias” whose crimes are “unprecedented successful the past of mankind”.

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“They person been condemned worldwide, but these condemnations are not enough,” Idris said. “What is needed present much than ever is to designate this radical arsenic a violent militia due to the fact that the information present is not lone threatening Sudan, but determination is simply a information that it volition travel and endanger the information stableness of Africa and the full world.”

Idris’s authorities is aligned with the Sudanese equipped forces (SAF) successful the civilian warfare against the RSF.

His remarks travel aft the RSF past week seized power of el-Fasher, the past stronghold of the Sudanese service successful Darfur. The city’s autumn enactment an extremity to 18 months of an RSF siege that caused a humanitarian situation successful the superior of North Darfur State.

But according to survivors, it besides unleashed wide killings, summary executions, rape and different abuses by the RSF against civilians. The Sudan Doctors Network enactment the decease toll astatine 1,500 successful the archetypal fewer days of the takeover with analysts estimating the decease toll to beryllium higher.

Satellite images analysed connected Wednesday appeared to amusement mass graves being dug successful the city. According to the International Organization for Migration’s displacement tracker, much than 80,000 radical person fled the metropolis and surrounding areas. And the United Nations estimated that hundreds of thousands of civilians were inactive trapped successful the metropolis arsenic of past week.

‘They took my hubby and tortured him’

Civilians recounted escaping the warring successful terror, fearing for their lives, navigating equipped checkpoints, and being confronted with extortion and abduction arsenic they tried to scope information successful the municipality of Tawila, astir 50km (31 miles) westbound of el-Fasher.

“We were leaving el-Fasher and it was tragic,” Najwa, a displaced pistillate successful el-Dabbah exile campy successful Sudan’s Northern State, told Al Jazeera. “They took my hubby and tortured him. They bushed his look and his body. … We begged them to fto america go. They took him covered successful blood, unconscious. I don’t cognize if helium is live oregon dead.”

On Monday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it was taking “immediate steps … to sphere and cod applicable grounds for its usage successful aboriginal prosecutions”.

While acknowledging that some crimes person been committed by its forces, the RSF has mostly denied immoderate of the worst accusations against it and insists that it is “liberating” territory. The wide circulation of videos documenting crimes against civilians prompted RSF authorities to jailhouse 1 of its apical commanders, known arsenic Abu Lulu. On Wednesday, helium was freed.

The RSF and SAF person been astatine warfare since April 2023 erstwhile a rivalry betwixt Sudan’s service chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF’s commander, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, exploded into unfastened conflict.

The warring rapidly dispersed from the capital, Khartoum, to the conflict-weary Darfur region where the violence quickly took connected an intercommunal dimension, pitting equipped Arab men against fighters from the Masalit taste radical successful confrontations that witnesses and survivors described arsenic ferocious.

In the much than 2 years of conflict, the paramilitary radical gradually seized power of Darfur’s main cities with the SAF remaining lone successful el-Fasher earlier past week. Idris described the army’s retreat from the authorities superior arsenic a “tactical withdrawal”, rejecting the conception that it constituted a subject decision and expressed optimism implicit the army’s quality to retake the city.

He besides rebuked claims that determination is famine successful Sudan. On Tuesday, 3 UN agencies said famine had dispersed successful 2 areas of the country, including el-Fasher, wherever families are surviving connected leaves, carnal provender and grass.

More than 21 cardinal radical crossed the state are facing precocious levels of acute nutrient shortages, the largest specified situation successful the world, the study added.