Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 75 people in a drone strike that hit a mosque at a camp for displaced people near the western city of El-Fasher on Friday, first responders said.
The RSF conducted their strike as they make gains in their push to capture Darfur's last army-held city.
The attack struck a mosque at the Abu Shouk camp, just outside the North Darfur capital, said the Emergency Response Room, a local volunteer group coordinating relief in the camp.
"The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the mosque," the group said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF on the incident.
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El-Fasher, which has been under paramilitary siege for about 18 months, is the final state capital in Darfur still under the control of Sudan's army, which has been locked in a devastating war with the RSF since April 2023.
The city's fall would hand the RSF full territorial dominance over the region, where the UN and rights groups have already reported mass atrocities, including ethnically targeted killings.
Satellite imagery released by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab on Thursday showed RSF forces advancing on multiple fronts, including around Abu Shouk camp and the former UNAMID peacekeeping base, now used by anti-RSF Joint Forces.
The city remains under a communications blackout, making it difficult to verify casualties or coordinate aid.
There has been a significant rise in civilian killings in Sudan in the first half of this year amid growing ethnic violence, the UN human rights office said on Friday.
“Every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground,” Li Fung from the OHCHR Sudan told reporters in Geneva.
At least 3,384 civilians were killed from January to June, mostly in Darfur, according to new report by the Office for the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
The war in Sudan, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly 12 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
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