PARAMILITARIES rampaged through a town in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, reportedly killing more than 800 people in a multi-day attack, doctors and the UN said on Saturday.

The attack on Ardamata in West Darfur province earlier this month was the latest in a series of atrocities in Darfur as violence between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues.

Sudan has been engulfed in chaos since in mid-April, when simmering tensions between military chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open warfare.

The war came 18 months after the generals removed a transitional government in a military coup, ending Sudan's short-lived fragile transition to democracy following a popular uprising that forced the overthrow of president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Despite the warring parties’ return to the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia late last month, in recent weeks, the RSF advanced in Darfur, taking over cities and towns across the sprawling region.

The attack in Ardamata came after the RSF took over a military base in the town after brief fighting on November 4, said Salah Tour, head of the Sudanese Doctor’s Union in West Darfur. The military withdrew from the base, and about two dozen wounded troops fled to neighbouring Chad.

After seizing the military base, the RSF and its allied Arab militias rampaged through the town, killing non-Arabs inside their homes and torching shelters housing displaced people, Mr Tour said.

“They went from house to house, killing and detaining people,”  targeting members of the Masalit tribe, he said.

The Darfur Bar Association, an advocacy group, accused RSF fighters of committing “all types of serious violations against defenceless civilians” in Ardamata. It cited an attack on November 6 in which the RSF killed more than 50 people, including a tribal leader and his family.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said more than 800 people have been reportedly killed and 8,000 others fled to Chad, though the number of people who fled was likely to be an underestimate due to challenges registering new arrivals in Chad, it said.

It said about 100 shelters in the town were razed to the ground and extensive looting has taken place there, including humanitarian aid belonging to the agency.

“Twenty years ago, the world was shocked by the terrible atrocities and human rights violations in Darfur. We fear a similar dynamic might be developing,” said UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi.

Ardamata is a few miles north of Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur. The RSF and Arab militias have launched attacks on Geneina, including a major assault in June that drove more of its non-Arab populations into Chad and other areas in Sudan.

The paramilitary group and its allied Arab militias have been accused by the UN and international rights groups of atrocities in Darfur, the scene of a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s.

Such atrocities included rape and gang rape in Darfur, but also in the capital, Khartoum. Almost all reported cases have been blamed on the RSF.

The UN Human Rights Office said in July a mass grave was found outside Geneina with at least 87 bodies, citing credible information. Such atrocities prompted the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to declare that he was investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity in the latest fighting in Darfur.

The conflict has killed about 9,000 people and created “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history,” according to UN undersecretary-general Martin Griffiths.

More than six million people have been forced out of their homes, including 1.2 million who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, according to UN figures.

The fighting initially centred on Sudan’s capital Khartoum but quickly spread to other areas of the east African nation, including Darfur.

It has turned the capital into a battleground, wrecking most of the civilian infrastructure, most recently the collapse of a bridge over the Nile connecting Khartoum’s northern part with the capital’s sister city of Omdurman: both sides have traded accusations of having blown up the Shambat bridge.