Zamzam camp near el-Fasher is hosting an estimated 500,000 people, who are living in famine conditions
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 the target of 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”. There were many casualties, but the camp’s hospital no longer had a functioning surgery, he said.
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.
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.
North Darfur’s Health Minister Ibrahim Abdullah Khater told the BBC that those injured in the attack 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 Doctors Without Borders, 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.
