Sudan's capital, Khartoum - a major metropolis - has suffered massive destruction. Severe food shortages are projected to affect more than 19 million Sudanese if the current fighting is not curbed in the next two to three months. The United Nations says the"catastrophic" situation has put an estimated 25 million people - more than half Sudan's population - in need of aid and protection.
The western area of Darfur"has been the site of some of the worst atrocities since the conflict in Khartoum started in mid-April" said Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior crisis and conflict researcher for Human Rights Watch , in an interview with AllAfrica.on the escalating violence in Darfur, an area that captured attention twenty years ago for the brutality of attacks on civilians and the expressions of ethnic hatred towards its darker skinned population.
"With Sudan's long history of violence without punishment, its spiral into conflict was predictable, but it didn't have to be inevitable," said HRW Executive Director Tirana Hassan in an. Against the backdrop of impunity for atrocities, she wrote,"Sudan's descent into armed conflict this year and the tactics used are eerily familiar".
Today's report, compiled over months of investigations, primarily along Darfur's border with Chad, details the killings and looting carried out in West Darfur. Mohamed Osman, a Sudanese scholar and researcher in HRW's Africa division who conducted many of the interviews with refugees, told AllAfrica that"the risk of the region spiraling into further atrocities is real".