US seeks humanitarian truce in Sudan while ICC looks at el-Fasher rampage

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – The United States is working with both sides in Sudan’s war for a possible humanitarian truce, a U.S. envoy told The Associated Press on Monday, while International Criminal Court prosecutors said they are trying to preserve evidence from last week’s rampage through a besieged city in the Darfur region.

The latest alleged atrocities in famine-hit el-Fasher “are part of a broader pattern of violence that has afflicted the entire Darfur region” and “may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the ICC statement said, noting that evidence could be used in future prosecutions.

The Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group fighting Sudanese troops, captured el-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months. Witnesses have reported RSF fighters going house to house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults. According to the World Health Organization, gunmen killed at least 460 people at a hospital and abducted doctors and nurses.

Details have been slow to emerge as communications are poor. The death toll remains unclear.

The fall of el-Fasher heralds a new phase of the brutal two-year war in Africa’s third-largest country. The ICC’s chief prosecutor told the Security Council in January there were grounds to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.

U.S. adviser for African affairs Massad Boulos told the AP in an interview on Monday that the U.S. is working with the Sudanese army and RSF to bring about a humanitarian truce and could have an announcement “soon.”

“We were working on this for the last almost 10 days with both sides, hoping to finalize the details,” Boulos said. The U.S.-led plan would start with a three-month humanitarian truce followed by a nine-month political process, he said.

The U.S. has been working for months with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, calling themselves the Quad, on ways to end the war. In September, they called for a humanitarian truce for an initial three months to deliver desperately needed aid.

“The atrocities that we’ve seen, of course, are totally unacceptable,” Boulos added of videos showing RSF and allied gunmen committing atrocities against civilians including beatings, killings and sexual assaults. The AP has not been able to independently verify the videos.

Earlier this month, the ICC for the first time convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur after looking into atrocities in the region for more than two decades. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, was found guilty of ordering mass executions and bludgeoning two prisoners to death with an ax.

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Abuelgasim reported from Cairo.