INTERNATIONAL Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has announced that his office wil seek arrest warrants for individuals accused of committing atrocities in Sudan’s West Darfur region.

There are accusations that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighting government forces for 19 months have carried out ethnic cleansing.

Karim Khan told the United Nations security council on Monday that crimes were being committed in Darfur “as we speak and daily” and that they were being used as a weapon of war. 

He said that conclusion was the result of “a hard-edged analysis” of evidence and information collected by his office.

Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital Khartoum and spread to other parts of the country, including Darfur.

Two decades ago, the vast western region of became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias, against populations that identify as central or east African. 

Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.

Mr Khan told the council in January there were grounds to believe that both government forces and the RSF, which was born out of the Janjaweed, may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.

Before Joe Biden’s US administration left office earlier this month, it alleged that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide in Sudan’s civil war. 

The ICC prosecutor told the council on Monday that there were “very clear echoes” in the current conflict of what happened 20 years ago.

“The pattern of crimes, the perpetrators, the parties, tracked very closely with the same protagonists, the same targeted groups as existed in 2003” and led the security council to refer Darfur to the ICC, Mr Khan said. 

“It’s the same communities, the same groups suffering, a new generation suffering the same hell that has been endured by other generations of Darfuris and this is tragic.”

He made it clear that his office was “taking the necessary steps to put forward applications for warrants of arrest in relation to crimes we allege are being committed and have been committed in West Darfur.”

He gave no details on the specific crimes or the people the ICC wants arrested, but he did say this office was particularly concerned about a stream of allegations of gender crimes against women and girls, adding that they were “a priority” for the court.