A gun and artillery attack by Sudanese paramilitaries on a village in Sudan’s main agricultural region killed at least 104 people, including dozens of children, Sudanese pro-democracy activists said.
The exact circumstances of Wednesday’s attack in Wad al-Noura, a village 70 miles south of the capital, Khartoum, were discussed.
But the high death toll, as well as images of a mass burial on Thursday that circulated on social media and were verified by The New York Times, sparked international condemnation and made the attack the latest flashpoint in the brutal US war. a year in Sudan.
“Even by the tragic standards of Sudan’s conflict, the images emerging from Wad Al-Noura are heartbreaking,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the top U.N. official in Sudan, said in a statement.
“The world is watching,” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron wrote on social media. “Those responsible will be held accountable.”
Still, Sudan has suffered numerous atrocities and little accountability since descending into a disastrous civil war just over a year ago, when fighting broke out between the national army and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.
And with phone lines down in Jazeera province, home to Wad al-Noura, Sudanese were relying on videos and stories from local activists to make sense of the latest mass casualties.
A video shared online and geolocated by The Times shows a convoy of at least five Rapid Support Forces vehicles lined up on a road about a half-mile from Wad al-Noura on Wednesday.
Gunmen can be seen standing at the back of stationary vehicles firing machine guns across open fields towards the village. The video lasts about five minutes, amidst constant gunshots.
A person narrating the video says that the inhabitants have blocked access to the town to prevent the fighters from reaching it. It does not appear that he fired at the combatants.
However, a separate video from inside Wad al-Noura suggested that the village had mounted some form of armed defense. In the video, a resident calls for help while gunshots are heard outside.
“The town is under siege,” the man says. “Save Wad al-Noura.”
The local resistance committee, part of a national network of pro-democracy groups, called the incident a massacre. On Thursday, he posted videos showing at least 50 bodies wrapped in cloth and ready to be buried in the village.
The videos and photographs were verified by The Times and the Sudan Witness Project of the Center for Information Resilience, a nonprofit organization that monitors conflicts and documents possible war crimes.
At least 104 people died, the resistance committee said, blaming the national army for failing to save them. “The people of Wad Al-Noura asked the army to rescue them, but shamefully they did not respond.”
The Rapid Support Forces questioned that version. In a statement, he admitted that his forces had opened fire on Wad al-Noura, but said they were attacking military positions around the village and had lost eight soldiers in the fighting.
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a statement she was “horrified” by reports that at least 35 children were killed and 20 injured in the violence, and called on warring parties to respect international laws.
Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, visited villagers injured in the attack on Thursday. Speaking at a hospital in the nearby town of Al Managil, he said the army would give a “tough response” to the RSF for the killings.
The town is in an agricultural region that was once the breadbasket of Sudan but is now a vast battlefield.
The RSF captured Wad Madani, the regional capital of Jazeera province, in December as part of a stunning series of victories that put the Sudanese army at a disadvantage.
In recent months, the military has attempted to recapture Jazeera with a major counteroffensive. Wad al-Noura is about 20 miles from the nearest front line in that fighting.
In the western Darfur region, the RSF has laid siege to El Fasher, the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese army in Darfur, stoking fears that a full-scale war within the city could lead to ethnic massacres or worsen a hunger crisis that , according to aid workers, threatens to turn into famine.
The RSF has received weapons and other support from the United Arab Emirates, its main foreign sponsor, according to US and UN officials. On Thursday, the United States imposed new sanctions related to the conflict in Sudan on seven companies based in the Emirates.
Abdalrahman Altayeb contributed to this report from Port Sudan, Sudan. The videos were edited by Ainara Tiefenthäler