CAIRO (AP) — A human rights group on Tuesday called on the International Criminal Court to investigate atrocities in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, including what it calls “executions summaries” of 28 non-Arab tribesmen by a Sudanese paramilitary force and allied Arab militias in May.
Human Rights Watch said several thousand members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and their allies ransacked the Darfur town of Misterei, home to the non-Arab Massalit tribe, on May 28.
The attackers killed the tribesmen and also left dozens of civilians dead or injured, the New York-based watchdog said. The attack came as paramilitaries and the Sudanese army are engaged in months-long fighting that the United Nations says has brought Sudan to the brink of a full-scale civil war.
“The massacres of civilians and the total destruction of the town of Misterei demonstrate the need for a stronger international response to the widening conflict,” said Jean Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. .
Human Rights Watch said the paramilitary force would not immediately comment on the group’s findings. HRW has urged the ICC to investigate the attack on Misterei and others elsewhere in Darfur as part of its investigation into the region’s genocidal war in the early 2000s.
The Darfur conflict began when African tribes who had long complained of discrimination rebelled against the government in Khartoum, which responded with a military campaign that the ICC later called a genocide. State-backed Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, have been accused of large-scale murders, rapes and other atrocities. The Janjaweed then evolved into the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Fighting between paramilitaries and the Sudanese army erupted in mid-April, initially concentrated in the capital, Khartoum. Later, the clashes spread across Sudan, including Darfur, which saw some of the fiercest battles.
According to Human Rights Watch, paramilitaries and allied Arab militias on motorcycles, vans and horses surrounded Misterei and clashed with Masalit fighters. The attackers, armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and vehicle-mounted machine guns, killed men in their homes, on the streets or in hiding.
HRW said it also looted property, stole livestock and valuables before burning down the town. Thousands of residents, including women and children, fled as attackers fired on them, killing many more, the group said.
He quoted an unidentified 76-year-old man as saying the attackers fired on the fleeing people. “I saw three people running, getting shot and falling to the ground near a grocery store,” he said.
The group said the attackers also went after those hiding in schools and a local mosque.
Rights groups said they documented the killing of at least 40 civilians. Local officials said 97 people were killed in the May 28 attack. At least 59 people were buried in mass graves, HRW said.
Besides Misterei, six other towns and villages in West Darfur were also burned over a period of weeks, according to satellite imagery and analysis of fire detection data. Geneina, the local capital of West Darfur, was also the victim of a widespread and apparently deliberate fire, HRW said.