{"id":39001,"date":"2024-12-02T01:15:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T06:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/bbc-hears-of-horror-and-hunger-in-sudan-massacre-town\/02\/12\/2024\/"},"modified":"2024-12-02T01:15:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T06:15:49","slug":"bbc-hears-of-horror-and-hunger-in-sudan-massacre-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/bbc-hears-of-horror-and-hunger-in-sudan-massacre-town\/02\/12\/2024\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC hears of horror and hunger in Sudan massacre town"},"content":{"rendered":"
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No one lives in the ghostly outskirts of El Geneina anymore.<\/p>\n
But its empty buildings still stand to tell their shocking stories, loudly and clearly.<\/p>\n
Charred homes and shops are peppered with bullet holes. Doors are wrecked. Metal shutters are smashed. Rusting Sudanese army tanks dot the streets. You can still smell the fires which blazed here last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was utterly chilling to drive through these smoked-out ruins and ghost towns,\u201d reflected the UN\u2019s new relief chief Tom Fletcher, whose visit to this hardscrabble capital of West Darfur marked the first time a senior UN official was able to visit this territory since Sudan\u2019s vicious war erupted 19 months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cDarfur has seen the worst of the worst,\u201d is how Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, described its calamity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s facing this crisis of protection, including an epidemic of sexual violence, as well as the spectre of famine.\u201d<\/p>\n
His short but significant visit only became possible after extensive negotiations with Sudan\u2019s two main rival forces \u2013 those headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), who heads the government recognised by the UN, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who are now in charge in most of Darfur.<\/p>\n
UN officials refer to the RSF as \u201cthose in control of the area\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was RSF fighters, along with allied Arab militias, who ran amok in El Geneina last year, mainly targeting residents from the non-Arab Musalit community in what human rights groups, including UN experts, have described as ethnic cleansing and possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watch concluded it was a possible genocide.<\/p>\n
The Sudanese army has also come under sharp criticism. Arab civilians were also reported to have perished in this turmoil, many from shelling by army tanks, or in blistering air raids.<\/p>\n
Both the RSF and the SAF deny accusations of war crimes and point accusing fingers at their rivals.<\/p>\n\n