Paramilitary Fighters Massacre More Than 100 Civilians, Doctors’ Group Says

Paramilitary forces killed more than 100 civilians in an attack on a city in southern Sudan on Thursday, according to an association of doctors, in the latest large-scale accusation of an atrocity of the country’scivil war.

The paramilitary fighters, called the Rapid Support Forces, said on Thursday that they had attacked the city of Nahud, which had been held by the Sudanese military along a highway connecting territory it holds with Darfur — a western region that has become a stronghold for the Rapid Support Forces.

At least 542 civilians have been killed in the region in just three weeks, the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Thursday, adding that the real toll is likely much higher.

“The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” he said in a statement about the war. “My fears are all the greater given the ominous warning by the R.S.F. of ‘bloodshed’ ahead of imminent battles.”

The Sudanese military drove Rapid Support Forces fighters out of Khartoum, the country’s capital, in March,but since then the paramilitary group has declared its own government in the areas that it controls, and pressed a major offensive to seize all of Darfur.

The doctors’ group, the Sudan Doctors Network, said that Rapid Support Forces fighters had carried out a “large-scale massacre” in Nahud on Thursday night, with 21 children and 15 women among the dead. The group said that the troops had also looted a medical supply warehouse, markets, pharmacies and a hospital.