A paramilitary force in Sudan has stormed the country’s largest displacement camp, looting and setting fire to the market and several homes, a local refugee group has said.
The Zamzam camp in North Darfur has been hit by intense artillery shelling since late last year, but this is the first time the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of sending in fighters.
An eyewitness told the BBC the situation at the camp was “extremely catastrophic”, and there were many casualties.
The nearby city of el-Fasher, one of the centres of the civil war that erupted in 2023, is already under siege by the RSF as it battles the army.
The military and RSF had been allies – coming to power together in a coup – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.
The Sudanese IDPs and Refugees Bloc said Zamzam camp was invaded on Tuesday.
However, an RSF spokesman denied its fighters had penetrated it, saying they had seized a nearby military base belonging to an armed group that fights alongside the Sudanese military, after it had shelled RSF checkpoints for days.
BBC Verify has confirmed social media footage that shows men waving guns triumphantly with flames behind them and saying they are in the camp.
The insignia has been removed from their uniforms, but the man filming the video has RSF markings.
Asked about the damage to the market the RSF spokesman said the group had “circulated a message in which we committed to protect the camp residents and asked them to stay away from the fire exchange areas”.
Zamzam hosts about half a million displaced people who were already suffering from famine.
Reports said the attack forced thousands of them to flee again.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which runs a hospital in Zamzam, said it had received seven dead bodies and 21 injured people at the hospital it runs in Zamzam.
Most of them were in a serious condition, but the hospital lacked the ability to care for all of them, an MSF spokesperson added.
The eyewitness the BBC spoke to said the hospital no longer had a functioning surgery.
North Darfur’s Health Minister Ibrahim Abdullah Khater told the BBC that the wounded were not able to reach el-Fasher for treatment because the RSF was blocking the road and preventing access to the city.
“The ones suffering the most are the displaced people,” he said.
The humanitarian catastrophe worsened late last year when Zamzam came under heavy artillery fire, which aid organisations, including MSF, blamed on the RSF.
A group of international non-governmental organisations issued a statement in December, saying the attacks on Zamzam marked “an escalation in violence on a site which has previously been spared from active hostilities”, although it was “consistent with a pattern of attacks” on other camps for displaced people.
“This underscores the reality that there are now no safe places for people to flee to in North Darfur,” it said.
The siege of el-Fasher began last April – a year into the conflict.
It is the only city still under army control in Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities.
