KHARTOUM — At least 60 people were killed in a drone strike targeting a displacement shelter in the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher, according to local resistance committees and activists on Friday.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group locked in a prolonged war with the Sudanese army, reportedly carried out two drone strikes and eight artillery shell attacks on the Dar al-Arqam camp, which is located within a university complex sheltering thousands of displaced civilians.

“Children, women, and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” the El-Fasher resistance committee said in a statement quoted by AFP, adding that the humanitarian situation in the city had “gone beyond disaster and genocide.”

El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, has been under RSF siege for 17 months, as the group attempts to seize the Sudanese army’s last major stronghold in the Darfur region.

The city’s population — swollen by tens of thousands fleeing fighting elsewhere — is enduring severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine amid constant bombardment.

Humanitarian agencies have warned that hunger, disease, and mass displacement are pushing El-Fasher to the brink of total collapse.

Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The power struggle has since killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. — Agencies