Sudan

Thousands of people have been forced to flee the Sudanese region of West Dafur amid fears of ethnic cleansing, a medical charity says. Witnesses have accused the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of targeting and killing non-Arabs, with reports of hundreds of deaths.

Sudan's warring parties have made no progress towards a ceasefire in their latest talks, instead reiterating past agreements to improve access to humanitarian aid, host Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday.

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) expressed alarm on Friday over reports that in Sudan, women and girls are being abducted, chained and held in “inhuman, degrading slave-like conditions” in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday warned Sudan’s paramilitary force against what Washington said were signs of an “imminent large-scale attack” in North Darfur’s capital where thousands have fled fighting.

The United Nations has welcomed the resumption of talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to end the months-long conflict between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary force which lefts scores dead and sent the northeast African country spiraling into humanitarian crisis.

Sudan's army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said they will return to the U.S.- and Saudi-convened negotiations in Jeddah on Thursday, as a six-month war has taken its toll on the country and on both forces.

Janjaweed leader Ali Abd-Al-Rahman's defense team is set to make their opening statements on October 19. Human rights lawyers say justice is necessary to end the ongoing conflict in Sudan.

The BBC has seen new evidence of the brutal ethnic violence that has swept western Sudan since fighting broke out between two rival military factions in April. Analysis of satellite and social media data reveals at least 68 villages in Darfur have been set on fire by armed militias since the civil war began. The UK Minister for Africa, Andrew Mitchell, told the BBC this bore "all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing".

[…] Siobhán Mullally, UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, said unaccompanied children and children from poor families have reportedly been targeted by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia in the outskirts of the capital Khartoum and elsewhere.

The UN Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to set up an independent fact-finding mission to probe alleged rights abuses in Sudan's brutal fighting.