Sudan’s Paramilitary Attacks Largest IDP Camps amid World’s Biggest Displacement Crisis, Killing Over 100
AFRICA, 28 Apr 2025
Pavan Kulkarni | Defend Democracy Press - TRANSCEND Media Service
People fleeing Zamzam camp during the largest attack by the RSF on the most populated IDP camp.
15 Apr 2025 – Burning down hundreds makeshift shelters used by the IDPs, Sudan’s paramilitary also torched the famine-struck camp’s central market and its community kitchen, burning the women inside alive, before attacking the last of the camp’s medical posts and killing all its staff.
Attacking the largest camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) amid the world’s largest displacement crisis in war-torn Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed over a hundred people, including over 20 children, on April 11.
That evening, after hours of shelling from multiple directions, the RSF’s troops broke into the Zamzam camp, where an estimated 750,000 displaced people have taken refuge.
Burning down hundreds of their makeshift shelters, they also torched the famine-struck camp’s central market and its community kitchen, burning the women inside alive, before attacking the last of the camp’s medical posts and killing all its staff.
“Nine of our colleagues were mercilessly killed, including doctors, referral drivers, and a team leader. This is a profound tragedy for our organization,” Relief International said in a statement. “This was a targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region to prevent access to healthcare.”
The attack, which continued the next day, resumed on April 13 at noon, according to Adam Rojal, spokesperson for the General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugee Camps.
“The most significant ground-based attack on Sudan’s largest IDP camp”
Analyzing satellite imagery, “significant areas of the camp in the center, south, and southeast portions of the camp” were burnt down by arson attacks, said the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab in a report on April 11. “This attack conservatively represents the most significant ground-based attack on Zamzam IDP camp since” the RSF began mounting its attack on El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, a year ago.
Located on the outskirts of this city, which is the last foothold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the five states of the Darfur region in Western Sudan, Zamzam camp has been repeatedly attacked.
Claiming to be targeting the armed groups allied with the SAF that have positioned themselves in and around the camp, the RSF has indiscriminately shelled its densely populated areas numerous times. The SAF has also killed many civilians in its airstrikes, claiming to be targeting the RSF troops making inroads into the camp.
Former allies ruling together in a military junta, the SAF and the RSF fell apart as their internal power struggle escalated into fighting, hurling Sudan into a civil war two years ago on April 15, 2023. The war has since killed an estimated 150,000 people and displaced over 12 million.
Even before this war started, the Zamzam camp was already hosting 350,000 IDPs who had fled the atrocities that SAF and the Janjaweed militias which later coalesced into the RSF were committing together during the Darfur civil war in the 2000s.
Famine-stricken
As more and more flocked to this camp amid the world’s worst displacement crisis caused by the now two-year-old war between SAF and RSF, food shortages worsened in the camp that was already dependent on aid.
With the supply routes of food aid cut off after the RSF laid siege on El Fasher mid-last year to complete the route of the SAF from the whole of the Darfur region, a famine was declared in Zamzam last August. By December, famine had spread to other areas including the Abu Shouk camp to the northwest of El Fasher.
This camp, currently hosting an estimated 450,000 IDPs, has also been under attack over the last few days. The RSF killed 35 IDPs, wounded dozens, and destroyed several shelters with heavy artillery fire on the Abu Shouk camp between April 10 and 11, said Rojal. On April 13, the attacks resumed, killing five more and injuring seven before another attack later that day during the Maghrib prayer, killing many elderly.
“The situation in Abu Shouk camp is catastrophic in every sense of the word. The shelling destroyed health facilities. The two main sources were bombed. There is no food, medicine, or water in the camps. The hospitals are destroyed, the markets are empty, and children are dying of hunger, thirst, and disease under the burning sun and the sound of gunfire,” he lamented in a statement.
“The darkest chapters of this conflict have yet to unfold”
“These families – many of whom have already been displaced multiple times – are once again caught in the crossfire, with nowhere safe to go,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan.
“What is happening in ZamZam, Abu Shouk camp, and Al Fasher is not just a tragedy – it is an atrocity. Civilians are being starved, slaughtered, and prevented from fleeing. Aid workers and local volunteer responders are being hunted,” added the Sudan INGO Forum.
Including the 56 residents killed in Um Kadadah, a town around 180 kilometers east of El Fasher recently retaken by the RSF, over 200 people were killed in North Darfur between April 10 and 13 in one of the worst violence since the start of this war.
“The world has witnessed two years of ruthless conflict which has trapped millions of civilians in harrowing situations, subjecting them to violations and suffering with no end in sight,” said Mohamed Chande, member of UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan. He went on to warn, “we fear the darkest chapters of this conflict have yet to unfold.”
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Tags: Africa, Civil War, Migrants, South Sudan, Sudan
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