Ten to fifteen thousand people were massacred in a town in Sudan’s West Darfur state because of their ethnic or tribal identity by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries and members of Arab militias allied with them in a three-month period last year, an independent report says. of experts of the United Nations Organization which came to the knowledge of the Reuters news agency last Friday.

In their report to the UN Security Council, the independent experts tasked with monitoring the implementation of sanctions in the African country attribute this information to their sources in intelligence services.

That figure pales in comparison to the UN’s overall toll — which, citing local authorities, puts the death toll at about 12,000 — since the outbreak of war on April 15 between the YPG under General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo and the armed forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

The two generals, who proceeded together in the 2021 coup, have been in a merciless conflict for power ever since.

The UN experts also described as “credible” reports that the United Arab Emirates is providing support to the IDF “several times every week” through northern Chad. A top Sudanese military officer accused the UAE in November of actively supporting paramilitaries.

In a letter to the experts, the UAE, on the other hand, assured that the 122 flights to Chad carried humanitarian aid to the Sudanese who have taken refuge in that country. The UN estimates that half a million Sudanese refugees are hosted in Chad – but mainly in its eastern part.

From April to June 2023, the violence in Jenaina was extreme, say the experts, who explain that the DTY mainly targeted members of the African Masalit tribe and that their attacks may have constituted “war crimes and crimes against humanity ».

The DTY last year denied accusations of massacres in this city, assuring that any member found to have committed a crime would be brought to justice.

The paramilitaries did not immediately respond when asked by Reuters to comment on the content of the report.

“The attacks were planned, coordinated and executed by the DTY and their allied militias,” the experts said in their annual report to the SA.

Reuters covered ethnically motivated violence in Darfur state extensively last year. He interviewed hundreds of survivors, who described horrific events in the town itself and on the thirty-kilometer drive to the border with Chad.

The report contains similar testimonies. From June 14 to 17 alone, it says, 12,000 people left Jenaina on foot for the border with Chad. Masalites were the vast majority of the city until the attacks caused a mass exodus.

When they arrived at DTY checkpoints, the paramilitaries separated the men from the women, searched them, robbed them, abused them and asked them, especially the young men, what their race was. “If they answered that they were Masalites, many were executed with a bullet to the head”, while the women were subjected to “beatings and rapes”. In addition, there were cases of massacres carried out indiscriminately — with “men, women and children” victims, always according to the text of the experts.

According to experts, the SDF captured most of the vast Darfur thanks to various lines of supply and support, especially from Arab communities allied with them, from dynamic and complex financial networks and through routes through Chad, Libya, and South Sudan.

The delegations of these latter three countries to the UN did not immediately respond when asked by Reuters for comment.

According to the text, DTY leverages their income from gold mining and has created a network of about 50 companies in various sectors. Much of the gold previously exported to the UAE is now smuggled out of the country, mainly destined for Egypt.

Thanks to their income from the businesses in their hands, the DTY was able to enlarge and renew their arsenal drastically changing the balance of power. They were able to partially capture Wad Madani, one of the country’s main cities, while they control the streets of the capital Khartoum as well as almost all of Darfur.

In December, the US government announced that it had concluded that both warring parties committed war crimes, while the SDF and Arab militias also committed crimes against humanity and genocide.

All international mediation efforts to end the war in Sudan through negotiations have so far failed.