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World leaders called for renewed talks to halt the war in Sudan, as reports emerged of widespread atrocities in a city recently captured by the paramilitary group fighting the army-backed government. Since seizing El-Fasher in western Sudan on Sunday, the Rapid Support Forces have been accused of executing hundreds of people, while about 30,000 civilians have fled the famine-hit capital of North Darfur state. Sudan’s Deputy Commissioner of Humanitarian Aid, Mona Nour Al-Daem, said Wednesday that about 2,000 people have been killed in El-Fasher since the RSF entered the city. The capture after a year-long siege marks a major advance for the group in a civil war that’s raged for more than two and a half years. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the RSF, said in a speech on Wednesday he would form an investigation committee to probe what happened. The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas and its Commissioner for Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib called “on all parties to immediately de-escalate” the violence in El-Fasher, which they said “marks a dangerous turning point in the war and threatens to further worsen the already dire humanitarian situation”. “Civilians being targeted based on their ethnicity underscore the brutality” of the RSF, they said. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was shocked by reports that 460 people at a hospital in El-Fasher had been killed in fighting and called for an immediate ceasefire. Two weeks before the unfolding events in El-Fasher, US officials, including presidential adviser Massad Boulos, met in Cairo with Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to discuss dropping sanctions and possible investment in Sudan’s mineral sector in exchange for his commitment to a peace deal, diplomats with knowledge of the meeting earlier this month said. The engagement, which was not made public, came after repeated, failed attempts over the course of the last two years by numerous countries to forge a peace deal and bring the warring parties together for talks. The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab released satellite imagery that shows “evidence of continuing mass killing” and house-to-house clearance operations in El-Fasher since Sunday. The US sanctioned the head of the RSF in January, after determining the group was guilty of genocide. Javid Abdelmoneim, the president of Medecins Sans Frontieres, described the situation as “horrific”. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is “deeply alarmed” by the continued flow of weapons and fighters into Sudan, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The United Arab Emirates, accused of backing the RSF – an allegation it denies – is facing renewed calls to disengage as fighting intensifies. “I am sickened by the images of the RSF seizing El-Fasher in Sudan. The UAE needs to cease their support,” Democratic congresswoman Sara Jacobs wrote on social media on Tuesday. “The Trump administration needs to invest in a real peace process that is not rigged to benefit external backers of this horrific war.” Adding to the turmoil in Sudan, the World Food Programme said on Wednesday that the army-backed government had expelled its country director and emergency coordinator without explanation, deepening concerns about the international community’s ability to respond to a worsening famine in Darfur. “At a moment when WFP and its partners need to be expanding their reach, this decision forces WFP to implement unplanned leadership changes, jeopardising operations that support millions of vulnerable Sudanese facing extreme hunger, malnutrition, and even starvation,” it said in a statement.
