Red Cross head says 'history repeating' in Sudan after reported killings

RIYADH (Reuters) - The head of the Red Cross says history is repeating itself in Sudan's Darfur region after reports of mass killings during the fall of the city of al-Fashir to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary last week.

The RSF's capture of al-Fashir – the Sudanese army's last holdout in Darfur – marked a milestone in Sudan's civil war, giving the paramilitary force de facto control of more than a quarter of the country's territory.

Hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been killed during the city's fall, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday. Witnesses have described RSF fighters separating men from women and children, with gunshots ringing out afterwards. The RSF denies harming civilians.

CIVILIANS TRAPPED WITHOUT FOOD AND WATER

The situation in Sudan is "horrific," International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric told Reuters in a weekend interview during a visit to Riyadh.

She said tens of thousands of people had fled al-Fashir after the RSF seized the city and it was likely that tens of thousands more were trapped there without access to food, water or medical assistance.

"It's history repeating, and it becomes worse every time a place is taken over by the other party," she said.

A crackdown on Darfur rebels in the 2000s led to years of ethnically driven violence that killed hundreds of thousands in what was widely labelled genocide. The RSF has its roots in the "Janjaweed" militias mobilised by the government at the time.

Spoljaric also said the ICRC was "extremely concerned" about reports of a suspected massacre at the Saudi Hospital, the last-known functioning medical facility in al-Fashir, although it could not yet substantiate what happened there.