Sudan: Fighting breaks out in el-Fasher following RSF attack

Fighting broke out again on Saturday in Sudan's el-Fasher following an attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, witnesses told AFP.

The Yale University Humanitarian Research Laboratory reported "unprecedented large-scale fighting between the army and the RSF" in the city, while witnesses told AFP of several bombardments by the army in the southern and eastern parts of the city. 

The RSF has besieged the city, the only capital in the five Darfur states not under their control, since May.

Minni Minawi, governor of the Darfur region, said the Sudanese army had repelled "a large attack" by the RSF, but the group claimed to have advanced and captured military sites in the city.

"The neighbourhoods are completely empty and all you can hear are explosions and missiles," Ibrahim Ishaq, 52, who fled the city on Friday heading west, told AFP.

"The central market area has become uninhabitable because of the intensity of the explosions."

The war between the army and the RSF, which broke out in April 2023, has displaced 8 million people and caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties, according to the UN. 

Eyewitnesses recently told Middle East Eye that they were facing daily massacres perpetrated by the RSF. The atrocities, they said, were occurring every day across the country, particularly in Gezira and Sennar states in central Sudan