A SUDANESE paramilitary group reportedly killed 43 civilians while praying inside a mosque early today in the besieged city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, said a local medical group.

The Sudan Doctors Network said on social media today that Muslim worshippers, including older people and children, had been killed in a drone strike launched by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), calling it a “heinous crime” against unarmed civilians that showed the group’s “blatant disregard for humanitarian and religious values and international law.”

The Resistance Committees in El Fasher, a group comprised of local citizens from the community that includes human rights activists, who track abuses, posted a video today reportedly showing parts of the mosque reduced to rubble with several bodies scattered on the site, now filled with debris.

No details were shared about the exact location of the mosque, but the latest drone strike is among a series of attacks over the past week as the RSF and the army heavily clashed in El Fasher.

The fight between the army and the RSF escalated in April 2023, erupting into a civil war that has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation, displaced as many as 12 million others and pushed many to the brink of famine.

El Fasher has been at the epicentre of fighting for over a year between the two and is the military’s last stronghold in the Darfur region.