UN investigators: network in Chad, Puntland, Libya and the UAE backs the RSF, and drone attacks on civilians hit a record in October

UN-appointed investigators said on 28 October that individuals and entities in Chad, Puntland in Somalia, south-eastern Libya and the United Arab Emirates were part of a transnational network supporting Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and that October has seen the highest number of drone attacks on civilians since the war began in April 2023.

The statements came at a press briefing by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, reported by UN News, as the mission published a new report on the besieged city of El Obeid in North Kordofan.

A network behind the RSF

Mission chair Mohamed Chande Othman said investigators found evidence of the transnational network and that they had not “linked any of the neighbouring States” to it. He said states that supply arms “cannot say that they are unaware.” The mission’s September findings on outside support for the warring parties were presented to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee.

Expert Joy Ngozi Ezeilo repeated the call to widen the UN arms embargo, which currently covers only Darfur, to the whole of Sudan. “Sovereignty should not shield mass atrocity crimes, period,” she said, marking one year since the RSF took the city of El Fasher. She said accountability remained absent.

El Obeid between drones and detention

The mission’s report, titled “Sudan’s Unrelenting War: Civilian Devastation and Deepening Insecurity in El Obeid”, says RSF drone strikes continue to kill and injure civilians and damage homes, schools, displacement sites and electricity and water systems. The investigators said these strikes may amount to war crimes. One expert told the mission that only about 30 per cent of hospitals in El Obeid were still working after the attacks.

The report also describes a second danger: arbitrary detention by forces on the other side. Expert Mona Rishmawi said thousands of people have been arrested by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) security cells and held and tortured in unofficial sites and in El Obeid Central Prison, and called for the practices to stop immediately. According to the mission, the prison holds about 2,000 people against a capacity of about 450, and a former detainee described up to 40 people in a cell of roughly 2.5 by 2 metres. The mission also says SAF-affiliated security actors have stepped up surveillance of people working on humanitarian, human rights and peace issues.

Incidents under investigation

The investigators said they are examining a drone attack on a market in Abyei on 19 October, reportedly by military government forces, which killed at least 80 people, and reported Egyptian airstrikes on gold mining sites near the Sudan-Egypt border that killed at least 72 miners. These figures are the mission’s reported accounts and are not independently confirmed here. Geopolitiki has followed the October escalation, including the UN human rights chief’s count in Sudan drone strikes kill at least 306 in three weeks of October, UN rights chief Türk says and the sanctions announced in UK sanctions 15 RSF and SAF commanders over atrocities in Sudan, a year after El Fasher fell.

The war between the former allies, now rival military forces, began in April 2023.