ISTANBUL 

UN rights chief Volker Turk on Friday warned of escalating atrocities in and around El-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, urging the international community to take “immediate and decisive action” to protect civilians trapped by months of fighting.

Addressing the 38th Special Session of the Human Rights Council on Sudan, Turk said the violence unfolding in the city includes some of the “gravest crimes imaginable,” with mounting evidence of mass starvation, sexual violence, targeted killings and the destruction of essential services.

“We have documented patterns of strangulation, starvation, mass killings, widespread sexual violence and forced displacement,” Turk said, adding that civilians had been reduced to eating leaves, animal feed and peanut shells to survive.

“Entire communities are being starved to death as armed groups encircle and terrorize the city," he added.

Turk accused the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of deliberately blocking humanitarian access and attacking medical facilities, humanitarian workers and vital infrastructure.

Satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts, he said, point to a “deliberate campaign of cruelty designed to subjugate and control civilians.”

Calling the situation “a display of naked brutality,” he urged UN member states to ensure immediate humanitarian access, impose targeted measures on individuals and networks financing or enabling the violence and press for an urgent cessation of hostilities.

“The international community has issued statements for too long, with far too little concrete action,” he said.

UN Special Adviser Adama Dieng warned that Sudan was experiencing a “human rights and humanitarian catastrophe” as fighting between SAF and RSF forces drives millions from their homes.

“Communities have been subjected to summary executions, torture, abductions, sexual violence and deliberate attacks on aid workers,” he said.

Rising hate speech and ethnically motivated violence, he added, risk pushing the conflict into even more serious atrocity crimes.

Dieng said civilians in several areas have been left without access to water, food, or healthcare.

“When you deny people access to water and basic services, you kill them without firing a bullet,” he said.

He called for the protection of civilians, the restoration of basic services, unrestricted humanitarian access and inclusive political dialogue aligned with the African Union’s "Silencing the Guns" initiative.

The bloody conflict between the Sudanese army and the RSF, which began in April 2023, has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of others.

The RSF seized El-Fasher last month and is accused of carrying out massacres. The group controls all five Darfur states out of Sudan’s 18 states, while the army holds most of the remaining 13 states, including the capital Khartoum.