Kamil Idris tells Al Jazeera violence could spill beyond Sudan\u2019s borders if international community fails to step in.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris has called for the international community to designate the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as a \u201cterrorist\u201d organisation and warned that violence could spill over to the wider region as evidence of atrocities committed by the paramilitary group in the western region of Darfur piles up.<\/p>\n In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Idris slammed the RSF as \u201cmercenaries and rebel militias\u201d whose crimes are \u201cunprecedented in the history of mankind\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cThey have been condemned worldwide, but these condemnations are not enough,\u201d Idris said. \u201cWhat is needed now more than ever is to designate this group as a terrorist militia because the danger now is not only threatening Sudan, but there is a danger that it will come and threaten the security stability of Africa and the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n Idris\u2019s government is aligned with the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) in the civil war against the RSF.<\/p>\n His remarks come after the RSF last week seized control of el-Fasher, the last stronghold of the Sudanese army in Darfur. The city\u2019s fall put an end to 18 months of an RSF siege that caused a humanitarian crisis in the capital of North Darfur State.<\/p>\n But according to survivors, it also unleashed mass killings, summary executions, rape and other abuses by the RSF against civilians. The Sudan Doctors Network put the death toll at 1,500 in the first few days of the takeover with analysts estimating the death toll to be higher.<\/p>\n Satellite images analysed on Wednesday appeared to show mass graves being dug in the city. According to the International Organization for Migration\u2019s displacement tracker<\/a>, more than 80,000 people have fled the city and surrounding areas. And the United Nations estimated<\/a> that hundreds of thousands of civilians were still trapped in the city as of last week.<\/p>\n Civilians recounted escaping the fighting in terror, fearing for their lives, navigating armed checkpoints, and being confronted with extortion and abduction as they tried to reach safety in the town of Tawila, about 50km (31 miles) west of el-Fasher.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were leaving el-Fasher and it was tragic,\u201d Najwa, a displaced woman in el-Dabbah refugee camp in Sudan\u2019s Northern State, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThey took my husband and tortured him. They beat his face and his body. \u2026 We begged them to let us go. They took him covered in blood, unconscious. I don\u2019t know if he is alive or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said<\/a> it was taking \u201cimmediate steps \u2026 to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions\u201d.<\/p>\n While acknowledging that some crimes have been committed by its forces, the RSF has largely denied some of the worst accusations against it and insists that it is \u201cliberating\u201d territory. The widespread circulation of videos documenting crimes against civilians prompted RSF authorities to jail one of its top commanders, known as Abu Lulu. On Wednesday, he was freed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The RSF and SAF have been at war since April 2023 when a rivalry between Sudan\u2019s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF\u2019s commander, Mohamed Hamdan \u201cHemedti\u201d Dagalo, exploded into open conflict.<\/p>\n The fighting quickly spread from the capital, Khartoum,\u00a0to\u00a0the conflict-weary Darfur region\u00a0where\u00a0the violence\u00a0quickly took on an intercommunal dimension, pitting armed Arab men against fighters from the Masalit ethnic group in confrontations that witnesses and survivors described as ferocious.<\/p>\n In the more than two years of conflict, the paramilitary group gradually seized control of Darfur\u2019s main cities with the SAF remaining only in el-Fasher before last week. Idris described the army\u2019s retreat from the state capital as a \u201ctactical withdrawal\u201d, rejecting the notion that it constituted a military defeat and expressed optimism over the army\u2019s ability to retake the city.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018They took my husband and tortured him\u2019<\/h2>\n
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