UN Security Council concerned over imminent attack in Sudan's North Darfur

The UN Security Council on Saturday expressed its "deep concern" over an imminent attack on al-Fashir in Sudan's North Darfur region by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

War erupted in Sudan one year ago between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF, creating the world's largest displacement crisis.

Al-Fashir is the last major city in the vast, western Darfur region not under the control of the RSF. The RSF and its allies swept through four other Darfur state capitals last year and were blamed for a campaign of ethnically driven killings against non-Arab groups and other abuses in West Darfur.

The Security Council, in a statement, "expressed their deep concern over an imminent offensive by the Rapid Support Forces and their allied militias" against the city of al-Fashir.

"They called on the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to end the build-up of military forces and to take steps to de-escalate the situation," the statement said.

Top UN officials warned the Security Council last week that some 800,000 people in al-Fashir were in "extreme and immediate danger" as worsening violence advances and threatens to "unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur."

UN  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again called on all parties to refrain from fighting in the al-Fashir area adding that his envoy on Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, was working to de-escalate the tensions.

The fight for al-Fashir, a historic centre of power, could be more protracted, inflame ethnic tensions that surfaced in the early-2000s conflict in the region and reach across Sudan's border with Chad, say residents, aid agencies and analysts.

The U.N. has said nearly 25 million people, half of Sudan's population, need aid and some 8 million have fled their homes.

A United Nations-backed global authority on food security has said that immediate action is needed to "prevent widespread death and total collapse of livelihoods and avert a catastrophic hunger crisis in Sudan."

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• Sudan
• UN Security Council
• Darfur
• darfur war
• darfur crisis
• UN Security Council concerned over imminent attack in Sudan's North Darfur
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Donors last week pledged more than $2 billion for Sudan at a conference in Paris.