PORT SUDAN (AFP) — Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 75 people in a drone strike that hit a mosque at a camp for displaced people near the western city of El-Fasher on Friday, first responders said.

The RSF conducted their strike as they pressed a push to capture Darfur’s last army-held city.

The attack struck a mosque at the Abu Shouk camp, just outside the North Darfur capital, said the Emergency Response Room, a local volunteer group coordinating relief in the camp.

“The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the mosque,” the group said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF on the incident.

El-Fasher, which has been under paramilitary siege for about 18 months, is the final state capital in Darfur still under the control of Sudan’s army, which has been locked in a devastating war with the RSF since April 2023.

The city’s fall would hand the RSF full territorial dominance over the region, where the United Nations and rights groups have already reported mass atrocities, including ethnically targeted killings.

‘Full control’

Satellite imagery released by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab on Thursday showed RSF forces advancing on multiple fronts, including around Abu Shouk camp and the former UNAMID peacekeeping base, now used by anti-RSF Joint Forces.

The Joint Forces, a coalition of former rebel groups from Darfur, sided with the army in late 2023 after mass killings targeting the Masalit tribe in West Darfur state capital El-Geneina.

“RSF has likely captured the former UNAMID compound, Joint Forces’ base of operations,” Yale said, citing damage visible in satellite imagery collected between Monday and Thursday.

An RSF official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, told Agence France-Presse: “By around 2 p.m. (Thursday), our forces had taken full control of the UNAMID base.”

Buildings near Abu Shouk have been razed to the ground between Monday and Wednesday, according to Yale’s analysis of low-resolution satellite imagery.

RSF units now control much of the famine-hit Abu Shouk displacement camp, a densely populated area just three kilometers north of UNAMID, according to eyewitnesses.

This places El ‘Fasher airport — the army’s de facto base of operations located three kilometers south of UNAMID — and the army’s 6th Division headquarters both within direct RSF firing range.

El-Fasher remains under a communications blackout, making it difficult to verify casualties or coordinate aid.

The war in Sudan, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly 12 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.

The war has divided the country, with army controlling the country’s north, east and center, while the RSF dominates swathes of the south and most of Darfur, where it has begun establishing parallel administrative structures.