THE United Nations human rights office said in a new report released today that scores of people, including children, have been subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence during the fighting in Sudan.

The UN body said the assaults may amount to war crimes.

Sudan was plunged into chaos in mid-April when clashes erupted in the capital, Khartoum, between the country’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and a paramilitary faction known as the Rapid Support Forces, under the command of General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

The fighting quickly spread across the African country, especially urban areas but also the restive western Darfur region, and has so far killed at least 12,000 people and sent over eight million fleeing their homes, the report said.

The report, which covers a period from the outbreak of the fighting up to December 15, documents abuses in a country that has been largely inaccessible to aid groups and rights monitors recently, obscuring the truth about a conflict that has been overshadowed by wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

The report found that at least 118 people had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, with many of the assaults committed by members of the paramilitary forces, in homes and on the streets.

One woman, the UN said, “was held in a building and repeatedly gang-raped over a period of 35 days.”

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said: “Some of these violations would amount to war crimes.

“For nearly a year now, accounts coming out of Sudan have been of death, suffering and despair, as the senseless conflict and human rights violations and abuses have persisted with no end in sight.”

He added: “The guns must be silenced, and civilians must be protected.”

Earlier in February, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres told reporters that continued fighting “will not bring any solution so we must stop this as soon as possible.”