GENEVA: Sudan has seen a significant rise in civilian killings during the first half of this year due to growing ethnic violence, largely in the western region of Darfur, the UN human rights office said on Friday.
The conflict that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven killings, caused mass displacement, and created what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
At least 3,384 civilians were killed between January and June, mostly in Darfur, according to a new report by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. The figure is equivalent to nearly 80 percent of the civilian casualties in Sudan documented last year.
Throughout the war, casualty numbers have been hard to track because of the collapse of local health services, fighting, and communications breakdowns, among other reasons.
“Every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground,” OHCHR Sudan representative Li Fung said in Geneva.
