Videos prove ethnic crimes committed by militias affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces in Darfur

The scene takes place in the dirty yard of a farm in North Darfur in western Sudan. Two bodies lie on the ground, the head of one of them in a pool of blood. Around them, a dozen men proudly brandish swords, whips and Kalashnikov assault rifles. They shout “Allahu Akbar”.

A second video, taken a kilometer away, shows six lifeless bodies lying in front of a line of men wearing turbans. Four of the victims have their hands tied behind their backs, and blood is dripping from the head of one of them. It is an execution. Who is behind it and why?

These images, obtained and authenticated by The World with Lighthouse Reports, the Washington Post and Sky News shed light on the ethnic dimension of these mass executions. They also identify those responsible: Arab militias belonging to the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Ethnically motivated atrocities

Since April 2023, the RSF, led by dissident General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti,” has been at war with the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the regular army commanded by General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Al-Burhan. In just over a year, this conflict has displaced nearly 8 million people and killed tens of thousands, according to the United Nations.

In the Darfur region, the conflict is marked by ethnic violence that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since 2003. The RSF enjoys the support of Arab tribes, from which it sets up militias to fight against the regular army and its allies. Allies include rebel groups that recruit from the region's non-Arab ethnic minorities.

According to several NGO reports, the conflict has seen an increase in violence by Arab militias linked to the RSF against civilians from non-Arab communities, particularly the Masalit and Zaghawa. The RSF has repeatedly denied these attacks, blaming them on “purely tribal conflicts” and regular Sudanese forces. Videos verified by The WorldHowever, they contradict these claims.

The city of Kutum was attacked

In early June 2023, the conflict reached the small town of Kutum in North Darfur. According to a dozen local testimonies we collected, RSF militias first stormed the town on the morning of June 3. Some of the attackers then made their way to the Kassab refugee camp, which was built after the 2003 genocide three kilometers north of Kutum and is mainly inhabited by members of the Zaghawa community. This is where the attacks took place.

Visual clues in the two videos of these executions enabled The World and his partners to locate them. The first was filmed in Kassab, in the courtyard of a house northwest of the camp. Analysis of the size of the shadows visible in the video shows that the scene occurred shortly before noon.

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