Violent clashes in the camps for the displaced in Darfur…and sexual violence against women

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, announced Thursday More than 100 people were killed in clashes Violence took place in and around IDP camps in Sudan’s North Darfur state.

“There are horrific reports of sexual violence against women and girls,” Grandi said on Twitter. “It will only get worse unless the parties to the conflict agree to end the fighting that is ravaging Sudan.”

Hassan Ibrahim Fadl, deputy secretary of information in the Sudanese “Justice and Equality” movement, said yesterday, Wednesday, that armed militias had killed the governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abkar.

In the same context, the representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Mandeep O’Brien expressed her deep concern about the impact of the continuing violence on children in Darfur.

“Two months after the start of the crisis, the future of Sudan is at stake,” she added on Twitter.

She said UNICEF and its partners needed safe and unrestricted access to all areas where children were in urgent need of assistance.

And the Sudanese army announced, at dawn on Thursday, that the Rapid Support Forces had kidnapped the governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abdullah Abkar, and then killed him, considering that his liquidation was a “brutal act that added to its record of crimes.”

The Sudanese army commander, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, condemned “the treacherous attack by the Rapid Support Forces, in which they targeted the governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abdullah Abkar, and killed him in the city of El Geneina.”

He said in a statement that the Rapid Support Forces target civilian facilities in the city of El Geneina, stressing that “the governor of West Darfur has nothing to do with the course of the conflict between us and the Rapid Support Forces.”