CAIRO (AP) — The bodies of dozens of people believed to have been killed by Sudanese paramilitaries and allied militias have been discovered in a mass grave in West Darfur, the United Nations said Thursday.
According to “credible information” obtained by the United Nations Human Rights Office, the bodies of the 87 people, some of whom belong to the African ethnic Masalit tribe, were thrown into a shallow grave of one meter (about three feet) just outside the town of Geneina in West Darfur.
The first 37 bodies were buried on June 20, the UN agency said in a statement from Geneva. The following day, another 50 bodies were dumped at the same site. Seven women and seven children were among those buried.
Sudan has been rocked by violence since April 15, when tensions between the army and paramilitary rapid support forces erupted into open fighting.
Darfur has been at the epicenter of the 12-week conflict, escalating into ethnic violence with RSF troops and allied Arab militias attacking ethnic African groups.
The RSF and allied Arab militias ransacked the western province, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, rights groups said, and many crossed the border into neighboring Chad. Amid the looting, entire towns and villages in West Darfur province were burned and looted,
Darfur had been the scene of a genocidal war in the early 2000s, when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination. The government of former dictator Omar al-Bashir has been accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes, known as the Janjaweed, who targeted civilians.
JanJaweed fighters were integrated into the RSF.
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Jamey Keaten contributed to this report from Geneva.