European weapons in Sudan (4/5): 'The RSF bombs public buildings, markets, and hospitals'

Recap of the first three articles in our series: Through videos and exclusive access to documents, the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to reveal that mortar shells found in the Sudanese desert were manufactured by the Bulgarian company Dunarit, and then sold on to the Emirati firm International Golden Group. The firm is known for diverting weapons illicitly to countries under international embargo. The supply chain of munitions we investigated ended up in Libya and finally Sudan as part of a convoy that included Colombian mercenaries. 

Read moreEuropean weapons in Sudan (1/5): Bulgarian mortar shells in Darfur’s desert 

Read moreEuropean weapons in Sudan (2/5): A €50 million Emirati contract  

Read moreEuropean weapons in Sudan (3/5): The mercenaries who travelled through Libya

In the videos they filmed on November 21, 2024, fighters with the Joint Forces say that the weapons they had just seized were en route to the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group that has been fighting the Sudanese army in a brutal civil war since April 2023.

We needed to verify this information. Were the weapons manufactured by the Bulgarian company Dunarit actually en route to the RSF? Would they be used in the civil war? 

'The United Arab Emirates is providing all of their support to the Rapid Support Forces'

Suliman Baldo is a Sudanese researcher and the founder of the Sudanese think tank Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker. He explains that many armed groups in Darfur, which are now allied to the Sudanese Army as part of the Joint Forces, also have benefited from Emirati support in the past. 

When they were fighting against the government in Khartoum, which ended with the Juba peace agreement in 2020, the Sudan Liberation Movement  [Editor’s note: one of the armed groups that is part of the Joint Forces] was based in Libya, in areas under the control of General Haftar. The same goes for most of the other Darfur-based armed groups. 

Haftar’s regime was supported by the United Arab Emirates so, indirectly, the Darfur armed movements were also allies of the Emirates. They benefited from weapons that the Emirates sent to Haftar’s army. When these movements left Libya and moved back into Sudan after the Juba agreements, they took with them goodbye presents that included lots of material like weapons from the UAE.

All of that ended when the war started in April 2023. Now it is really simple. The United Arab Emirates and Haftar’s regime provide all their support to the Rapid Support Forces.

The mortar bombs manufactured by Dunarit have ended up in Sudanese battlefields

Fighters with the RSF often film themselves in battle, sometimes while carrying out extrajudicial killings and heinous acts of violence towards civilians, as we showed in an investigation published back in 2023.

Our attention was caught by a video filmed in September 2023. Several Sudanese social media accounts said that it was filmed in Omdurman, a city connected to Khartoum. The footage shows a man firing mortar bombs. The phone that is filming him seems to be propped up on some other mortar bombs — and, in the video, you can clearly see the numbers stamped on them. These numbers indicate that they were manufactured by the Bulgarian company Dunarit.  

Initially, it is hard to know which side both the person who took the video and the militant seen firing the mortar bomb, are on. They aren’t wearing recognisable uniforms. 

“These are typical militia fighters,” says Suliman Baldo. “Half dressed in civilian clothes with pieces of military uniforms… they are even wearing sandals!”

However, it is possible to find out more about who these men are affiliated with by looking into the TikTok account of the person who filmed the footage, which we can find thanks to the username displayed on the video. The video has since been deleted from the platform because it violated the conditions of use, but the account is still active. 

This TikTok user follows a large number of accounts that belong to fighters from the Rapid Support Forces, or share propaganda about the RSF and its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. 

Another video, posted on the account on September 12, 2023, shows a child standing in front of a restaurant reciting phrases he’s clearly memorised. The person filming praises the child.  

The FRANCE 24 Observers team showed this video to 11 Sudanese people. Out of the 11, ten said that the man in the video was an RSF fighter. One of them, who requested anonymity, said: 

It looks like a child is trying to flatter the RSF fighter who is filming him by reciting a poem. He says, “We are going to burn the headquarters,” which seems to be a reference to the army’s headquarters. Then, he says: “the state is us, even if you don’t agree,” which is a defiant phrase. At the end, the man filming shows his approval.

The bombs manufactured by Dunarit were therefore present on the battlefield in Sudan’s civil war long before fighters with the Joint Forces filmed the convoy they intercepted in November 2024. 

The 6-digit number visible on the Dunarit bombs fired by militia back in September 2023 indicates that they were manufactured in 2019, just like those that Dunarit sold to International Golden Group. The documents that we viewed indicated that the sale also included 120 mm bombs, like the ones we see being fired in the video from September 2023. 

Mortar bombs, a death trap for civilians

The transfer of Bulgarian weapons to Sudan constitutes a violation of the arms embargo that the European Union has had in place since 1994. 

“Moreover, if these weapons were transported through Libya, that means that the people who transported them violated United Nations weapons embargoes twice over — once when they brought them into Libyan territory and then again when they were transferred to Sudan,” commented a former specialist in the region for the United Nations, who wanted to remain anonymous. 

However, this supply chain providing the RSF with European-made weapons not only breaks international law, it also has catastrophic consequences. 

Mortar bombs of the same calibre as those that Dunarit sold International Golden Group are regularly used in deadly bombings on Sudanese civilians, including by the RSF.

'If you fire a mortar bomb in a zone where there are civilians, you have a serious risk of hitting them'

Mike Lewis is a specialist in armed conflicts and a former member of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan. 

There are two important things to know about mortars. First, they're an indirect fire weapon, so they are used to fire at something that you can't necessarily see. Secondly, they are relatively imprecise weapons because they are unguided indirect fire weapons. So if you fire mortars in an area where there are civilians, you have a very serious risk of hitting a civilian target.

There has been a long history in Sudan of using weapons like mortar rounds or artillery rounds in areas where there are concentrations of civilians. Since the start of the civil war in 2023, there have been instances in which mortar rounds have been recovered in marketplaces, hospitals, and refugee camps.

In the video below, which certain local accounts on X and Facebook have said was filmed in the town of Omdurman, four RSF fighters fire a 120 mm mortar bomb at an unknown target. This bomb was not made by Dunarit, but it is the same calibre as the ones that you can see in the September 2023 video featuring two RSF fighters firing bombs manufactured by this Bulgarian company. 

This footage was filmed around December 9, 2024, when violent combat was taking place between the army and the RSF in Omdurman. 

In the days after this video was posted online, a number of Sudanese organisations and media outlets reported that civilians in Omdurman had been killed in “artillery bombings” carried out by the RSF, a phrase often used to describe mortar strikes. A video from December 10, 2024, reports the death of an entire bus load of civilians when their bus was hit by a projectile fired by the Rapid Support Forces. 

A number of social media accounts posited that the video showing the RSF fighters firing mortar bombs in Omdurman was linked to the bus that was hit. However, our team was unable to independently establish that the bus had indeed been hit by a projectile fired by the RSF. 

A series of mortar bomb massacres in Darfur carried out by the RSF 

The RSF has also been known to use mortar bombs to directly target civilian gathering places outside of active combat zones. Many of these massacres have taken place in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, where the RSF has been accused of genocide against the non-Arab population by the military-led Sudanese government. The 2024 report by the UN Panel of Experts on the Sudan documents one of these massacres, an attack on the capital of West Darfur, El Geneina, between April and November 2023. 

More recently, the RSF deliberately targeted civilians in El-Fasher, another town in Darfur that has been under siege by the RSF since the beginning of the civil war. On the outskirts of El-Fasher, there are a number of refugee camps, home to many people who have fled violence in other parts of Darfur. The RSF regularly attacks these camps. 

During these attacks, the fighters regularly and indiscriminately bomb the camps, with mortar shells. That’s what happened on December 31, 2024, in Abu Shouk, located to the northwest of El-Fasher. Posts by local humanitarian organisations show homes and a school in the camp that were bombed by the RSF. At least one person died in the bombings, according to a local humanitarian organisation called Abu Shouk Emergency Room.

Photos shared by local media outlet the Ayin Network show that mortar bombs were used in this attack. It isn’t possible to identify the manufacturer of these weapons in this case. 

The same thing occurred on January 24, 2025. A total of 117 bombs hit the camp, falling from early in the morning to late at night. A total of eight people were killed and dozens of others were wounded, according to the account  of Abu Shouk Emergency Room.  

Photos shared by the same NGO show that the mortar bombs used in this attack were not made in Bulgaria.

This was likely ammunition from Serbia, as documented by OSINT X account @FaisalElsheikh.

'The place where the bombings are the most deadly is the last market in the camp'

On February 20, Mohammed Adam, who works with the Abu Shouk Emergency Room, provided our team with a terrifying portrait of life inside the camp. 

Now, the soldiers with the army have advanced a bit and the RSF had to retreat to seven to ten kilometres from the camp. They keep firing at us because you can access the military camp through Abu Shouk camp. That’s why the RSF keeps firing at civilians with heavy weapons and mortar bombs —  to force them to move elsewhere and free up the passage to the army’s camp.

The RSF bombs public buildings, markets, and hospitals, so that civilians can’t access healthcare, find food, or go back to work. The aim is to force them to flee to safer areas, to empty out the place.

The place where the bombs are most deadly is the last market operating in the camp. People started using this market after the bigger market closed. When a mortar bomb hit the market recently, a number of people died and dozens were injured. 

All in all, since the start of the civil war, more than 500 people have died in our care. And that’s not even counting the people who die instantly during the bombings. Those people are brought directly to the cemetery, we don’t even have numbers for them but we think there have been at least 300. We are in the process of gathering all the names so we can publish them on our Facebook page.

Mike Lewis says the large number of civilian casualties isn’t surprising considering the technical characteristics of mortar bombs and a well-known history of both the RSF and the army bombing civilian zones. 

“In terms of the foreseeable civilian harms that could arise from supplying these kinds of weapons to a force like the RSF, it's very obvious that this kind of harm was predictable,” he said.

While this investigation was conducted, the RSF launched new assaults on camps around El-Fasher, including Abu Shouk and Zamzam camps. The death toll from these attacks, still provisional, is extremely high: at least 100 people, including 20 children, would have been killed according to the UN.

International Golden Group keeps quiet

Our team contacted International Golden Group by phone and email. They did not respond to our interview requests. It is thus impossible to know if they are aware that the weapons they bought in 2019 have been transferred to Sudan.

International Golden Group remains very active. It was a key participant in the IDEX 2025 expo, a massive arms and defence technology sales exhibition that was held in Abu Dhabi in February this year. 

In the last article in our investigation, we take a closer look at what went on at this year's IDEX expo while also exposing parts of the underbelly of the global weapons trade. It turns out that International Golden Group has a number of partnerships with French and European companies, despite the company’s well-known history of diverting weapons to zones under international embargo. 

This is the fourth article of a five-part investigation. 

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Mubarak Hasan Ali and Mohammed Nour Aoudou contributed to this article