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The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, backed by the United Arab Emirates, is accused of attempting to cover up its mass killings of civilians by burning and burying bodies, according to a new report by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab. This comes as drone strikes have plunged several cities into darkness, including Khartoum and the coastal city of Port Sudan. “We have the expansion of the war through Darfur, El Fasher, now Western Kordofan, which is an extremely important region economically. … And now we have this potential of the expansion of this war to South Sudan,” says Sudanese scholar Khalid Mustafa Medani. “We have a humanitarian crisis that has expanded, but we also have a military stalemate.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at the devastating war in Sudan, the UAE-backed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the RSF, facing accusations of attempting to cover up its mass killings of civilians in the city of El Fasher by burning and burying bodies. That’s according to a new report by Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which analyzed satellite images depicting RSF fighters likely disposing of tens of thousands of remains following its capture of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, in October. At least 1,500 people were killed in just 48 hours after the RSF seized the city. The report said this pattern of body disposal and destruction is ongoing.

In the latest news from Sudan, Al Jazeera reports drone strikes have plunged several cities into darkness, including the capital Khartoum and the coastal city of Port Sudan. The RSF and the Sudanese military have been increasingly using drones in a war that’s killed over 150,000 people since April 2023. Six U.N. peacekeepers from Bangladesh were killed last week in a drone strike on their base in Kadugli.

This is Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, speaking last week.

VOLKER TÜRK: In Sudan, the brutal conflict between the army and the Rapid Support Forces continues unabated. From Darfur and the Kordofans to Khartoum and Omdurman and beyond, no Sudanese civilian has been left untouched by the cruel and senseless violence. I’m extremely worried, and I say it again, that we may see a repeat of the atrocities committed in El Fasher in Kordofan.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, speaking on Democracy Now! earlier this month.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: What we’re seeing, through very high-resolution satellite imagery, is at least 140 large piles of bodies that appear at the end of October into early November, and we see basically a pattern of activity by the Rapid Support Forces that indicates they’ve been burning and burying bodies for almost the better part of five weeks. Meanwhile, we see none of the pattern of life that we expect to see in a place with civilians. There’s grass growing in the main market in El Fasher.........

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