At least 11 children were killed in the Friday drone strike that hit a mosque in the besieged city of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the UN children’s agency said Monday.
Local aid groups and activists and the Sudanese army accused the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces of launching the drone that struck the mosque during Fajr prayers early Friday, killing at least 70 people.
UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell in the Monday statement called the attack “shocking and unconscionable.” Russell said initial reports indicated that at least 11 children between the ages of 6 and 15 were killed and “many more” injured in the attack, which also damaged nearby homes.
The strike in the besieged city of el-Fasher completely destroyed the mosque and many bodies were trapped under rubble, said a worker with the local aid group Emergency Response Rooms on Friday. The worker spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the RSF.
The strike comes as the army and the RSF are fighting increasingly intense battles as part of the country’s ongoing civil war. The war has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, displaced as many as 12 million others, and pushed many to the brink of famine.
Three doctors also died in the attack, according to the Preliminary Committee of Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union and Sudan Doctors Network. They were among 231 medical personnel killed since the war in Sudan broke out, according to Sudan Doctors Network.
“The latest attack has torn apart families and shattered any sense of safety for children who have already suffered so much,” said Russell, adding that the RSF's siege of el-Fasher has trapped children who endure violence and have little access to food, clean water and healthcare while being “forced to witness horrors no child should ever see.”
Antoine Gerard, Sudan Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator with the UN, told The Associated Press on Monday that they are seeing more attacks on civilians now inside el-Fasher, who are also struggling to seek safety outside the city due to the siege and lack of safe routes.
“We are quite concerned about targeting civilians, targeting the population and particularly hospital, mosque and schools and any other civilian premises,” he said.
In a statement on Sunday, Sudan’s neighboring nation Egypt condemned the drone strike on the mosque and said it “constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, denouncing the targeting of places of worship and innocent civilians in the conflict.”
Fighting over the control of el-Fasher and surrounding areas in North Darfur intensified by early April and more than 400 civilians have been killed in RSF attacks in the area since April 10, according to a Friday report by the UN's human rights office. The majority were killed in a major offensive that seized the nearby Zamzam displacement camp.
The camp was turned into an RSF military base used to launch assaults on el-Fasher, according to the report.
