Since April 2023, the RSF has been battling Sudan’s army for control of the country in a brutal civil war.

At least 31 people, including children, have been executed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, according to the Sudan Doctors Network.

Minors were among the victims in Al-Salha area in the city, the group said, calling the killings “the largest documented mass killing in the region”.

The victims were accused by the paramilitary group of affiliation with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), local medics said.

Activists shared videos on social media showing individuals in RSF uniforms shooting at a group of people in the Al-Salha neighbourhood.

The doctor’s network also called the bloodshed by the RSF a “war crime and a crime against humanity”.

It appealed to the international community to take urgent action to rescue the remaining civilians by opening safe routes to ensure their exit from Al-Salha.

There was no immediate comment from the rebel group on the report.

Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said that the graphic video of the civilians being killed started circulating on social media in the early hours of Sunday morning and that the victims in the video belonged to the Barra brigade, which has been fighting alongside the army or SAF.

“Now the Sudanese army has been launching attacks trying to regain territory from the RSF in southwest Omdurman as well as western Omdurman, where the RSF also has presence … when it comes to southwestern Omdurman, the RSF continues to fight back,” she said.

The SAF and government have not yet released a statement.

Since April 15, 2023, the RSF has been battling Sudanese army forces for control of the country in a brutal civil war, resulting in thousands of deaths and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

More than 20,000 people have been killed so far, and 15 million others displaced, according to the United Nations and local authorities.

Research from United States scholars, however, estimates the death toll at around 130,000.

Israel has violated the November ceasefire multiple times, attacking the Lebanese capital and the south.

Israel has struck Beirut’s southern suburbs after issuing an evacuation warning, the third Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital since a ceasefire took effect in late November.

A huge plume of smoke rose over the area after the strike on Sunday. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the air strike and called for France and the United States, guarantors of the November 27 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, to compel Israel to halt its attacks. Israel has violated that truce multiple times in recent months and weeks with attacks on the capital and across southern Lebanon.

Aoun said Israel is undermining stability in Lebanon and escalating tensions, posing “real dangers to the security” of the region.

The Israeli military said the attack on Beirut destroyed “an infrastructure where precision missiles” were stored by Hezbollah. It did not provide proof for its claim. No secondary explosions were reported after the Israeli attack.

Local platforms have published footage filmed in the immediate aftermath of the bombardment. This video has been verified by Al Jazeera:

بالفيديو: دخان كثيف يتصاعد من “الهنغار” المُستهدف في منطقة الحدث بالضاحية الجنوبية pic.twitter.com/nLle4DuG8I

— هنا لبنان (@thisislebnews) April 27, 2025

‘Damage widespread’

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting in Beirut, said: “We were able a short while ago to reach the site that was targeted, but there was a lot of chaos, and we were told to leave.”

“The damage was widespread, also affecting nearby buildings. Windows were blown out, glass was on the floor, cars were damaged,” she added.

“This strike did come with a warning but without any provocation,” Khodr said. “This is not the first time that Beirut’s southern suburb has been hit since Israel and Hezbollah agreed to that ceasefire back in November, but this time, there was no rocket fire. So people here are concerned that Israel is rewriting the rules of engagement, saying that there are no red lines any longer and that this could be the beginning of an escalation.”

‘Pinging the system’ for intelligence

Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general, told Al Jazeera the Israeli strike on Beirut – and the warning that preceded it – may have been aimed at gathering intelligence on Hezbollah.

Hanna said such an operation is known as “pinging the system”.

“If you have information on certain individuals or facilities, you send the warning, and you wait to see how these officials or leaders will respond,” he said. “Will they move from one place to another?”

Hanna added that the operation could confirm or dismiss certain information, which would be a “win-win” scenario for intelligence gathering.

During the yearlong war, Israeli drones and fighter jets regularly bombarded the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has widespread influence and support. Israel assassinated several of Hezbollah’s top leaders there, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

The US has pressured Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, but Aoun has warned this is a “delicate” matter that must be handled in a way that preserves peace in the religiously diverse country. Hezbollah, which views itself as the resistance to Israel, says it will not disarm.

One dawn in mid-April, the very air in Zamzam Camp seemed to shatter.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the displacement camp in North Darfur, launching a brutal three-day assault that killed hundreds of people and left countless others scattered, injured or missing.

Gunfire echoed through makeshift shelters. Families ran in every direction. Many never made it out.

On April 13, the RSF claimed to have captured what it called the “Zamzam military base”. But those living there said no such thing existed, that Zamzam was simply where displaced families clung to life.

The takeover followed five months of suffocating siege. Roads and aid were blocked, and survival left to chance.

A shelter turned into a battlefield

Zamzam, 15km (9.3 miles) south of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been a refuge for civilians displaced by the Darfur conflict since the 2000s.

At the time, rights groups said the violence was ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide by state-backed “Arab” nomadic militias against mainly “non-Arab” sedentary communities.

About 300,000 people have ended up in Zamzam since 2003. The number swelled to well above 500,000 due to violence that has spread across the western region of Darfur since Sudan’s civil war erupted between the RSF and Sudanese military in April 2023.

In the past year, Zamzam has transformed from a place of refuge into a killing field.

Aid blockades, repeated RSF attacks and famine have stripped the camp of food, medicine and basic security.

The military and its allied forces managed to repel dozens of RSF assaults, but the troops soon returned to el-Fasher, their last stronghold, leaving the camp exposed once again.

Dr Ibrahim Abdallah, director general of health in North Darfur, told Al Jazeera over the phone that the death toll likely exceeds 500.

“Due to the Sudanese tradition of burying the dead immediately to honour them, it’s hard to keep track,” he said. “And with Zamzam located many kilometres from el-Fasher, transporting the bodies for documentation is nearly impossible.”

Fleeing one nightmare, only to find another

A young woman, who asked to remain anonymous for her safety, spoke to Al Jazeera from el-Fasher, to which she, her husband and her two younger brothers fled.

She says fear has followed them and told Al Jazeera part of the story of how she came to flee Zamzam.

In January 2024, she had been living with her husband in Wadi Shadra in North Darfur with her 15-year-old and 9-year-old brothers, who moved in with them after her parents died.

The RSF attacked Wadi Shadra, and the blended family fled to Zamzam, where they thought they had escaped the worst.

But then, just over a year later, another attack.

“It started at dawn on Friday [April 11],” she said. “A large force stormed the camp from the south, towards one of the markets. Fire broke out in every direction as gunfire rang out.”

They hid in trenches for a full day without food or water as a shell shattered their home and another struck a neighbour’s, killing three children.

Then they ran, fleeing to the nearby village of Saluma.

“But the RSF followed us there too. They torched the houses and shouted that we must go to Tawila immediately,” she said.

Their donkey had been killed and their cart destroyed, so they had no other option than to walk for hours to el-Fasher under a blazing sun.

“I lost my aunt and two of her children that day. We still don’t know what happened to her other three children.”

Trapped away from his family: Nasr’s story

Nasr, who asked to be identified by just one name, fled Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur, with his family in October 2023 after RSF fighters took the city. His father, a community leader, had twice been threatened by the late RSF commander Ali Yakoub.

The family passed through Sarf Omra, in Kabkabiya, North Darfur, before arriving in Zamzam on November 22, 2023.

He arrived with his wife, two children – a spirited three-year-old daughter and a toddler son just over one and a half years old – as well as his parents and several siblings.

Together, they built a fragile shelter and tried to start over. Each morning, Nasr made the 30km (18.6-mile) round trip to el-Fasher to work in the livestock market and bring home food.

Then, in February, RSF fighters stormed the camp. Roads were closed. The siege tightened.

Nasr never made it back to his family.

His wife, children, elderly parents and younger siblings remained behind, caught in the chaos.

“A tree is more valuable in this world than we are. We lost all our human value in this world,” Nasr said.

He rejected the RSF’s claim of a “military base” in Zamzam as a cruel distortion. He recalled how people dug trenches to shield themselves from relentless bombardment.

He later saw a video of detained men, among them his uncle. One of the RSF leaders delivered a clear message to them: “Join the RSF or suffer.”

Nasr has spent agonising days in el-Fasher, waiting by roadsides, clinging to hope that someone from Zamzam might bring word of his family.

He asks about them in whispers, his voice heavy with fear.

At last, he heard they had fled towards Tawila, but he adds: “Until now, I don’t know if they reached Tawila or not.”

‘More than 28 attacks in five months’

Mohamed Khamis, spokesperson for the displaced in Zamzam, is now a patient in a hospital in el-Fasher.

He was shot in the thigh during the RSF’s assault.

The camp had endured more than 28 attacks in five months, he told Al Jazeera, but none matched the scale and violence of the latest.

“They stormed in at dawn with heavy weaponry,” he said.

In the early moments of the attack, they reportedly targeted a Relief International Clinic, and Khamis rushed to check on friends, but he never made it.

“I was intercepted by an armoured RSF vehicle,” he said.

The RSF fighters shot him and left him on the ground to bleed out, but he was rescued by residents and smuggled to safety.

“Many young men were executed during the rampage,” he said.

He continued, trying to describe what happened.

More than 12 women and girls were confirmed to have been abducted by RSF fighters while fleeing. Their whereabouts remain unknown, as well as what they may be suffering.

There are reports of women and girls being raped, “no fewer than 200 cases” according to Khamis, although he is certain many more have gone unreported.

Even in cases that are reported, Khamis said: “Because of the social stigma, witnesses often use phrases like ‘she was humiliated’ or ‘touched’ instead of saying she was raped.”

No safe haven left

In the minds of those displaced for the second or third time, the idea of safety is gone.

The RSF narrative is that it is fighting “military elements” in Zamzam, but testimonies like Nasr’s and Khamis’s refute that.

“There was nothing there but people trying to survive,” Nasr said again, as if repetition might finally end the world’s indifference.

But the silence remains.

Survivors are left with ashes, unanswered questions and a single haunting truth: “We lost our human value in this world.”