‘Carnage’ must stop in Sudan, insists UN human rights office

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of violent clashes between rival forces in Sudan, UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Thursday, after “credible” videos surfaced of killings in cold blood, linked to the recapture of Khartoum by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

“There is likely an ethnic element” to the killings too, said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

He told UN News’ Daniel Johnson that sexual violence remains widespread in the war-torn country, before calling for UN Member States to intervene to stop almost two years of heavy fighting that has uprooted nine million people across Sudan and left an estimated 24.6 million facing acute hunger.

Specific measures that could bring the rival forces to the negotiating table include an extended arms embargo for Sudan that encompasses the whole country and not just Darfur, and a wider mandate for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to cover all of Sudan, he said.