Sudan's famine-hit Zamzam camp comes under fire, say residents and MSF

Sudan's famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp has been struck by shelling from the Rapid Support Forces, volunteers and medical aid agency MSF said, as the paramilitary group seeks to tighten control of the Darfur region in the country's war.

The RSF denied attacking the camp, hitherto a safe haven from devastating fighting in the region, and in remarks to Reuters accused the army-aligned Joint Forces fighters of deploying within the camp and using civilians as human shields.

"Not only have people been starving, but they are also now being bombarded and forced to flee again," MSF head of emergency operations Michel-Olivier Lacharité said in a statement that described a "beyond chaotic" situation with "casualties, panic, and mass displacement."

The army and the RSF have been locked in conflict for more than 18 months, triggering a profound humanitarian crisis in which more than 10 million people have been driven from their homes and U.N. agencies have struggled to deliver relief.

At least six people were killed and 13 injured by more than 20 shells fired at Zamzam camp on Sunday and Monday according to the al-Fashir resistance committee, a pro-democracy group that has monitored the violence in the area. There were no reports of shelling on Tuesday morning.

The RSF has staged an extended siege of nearby al-Fashir, the last major city of the region still controlled by the army and the allied Joint Forces. 

The siege and exchange of artillery and aerial shelling since April has killed scores and driven thousands out of the city, including to Zamzam, a vast camp home to at least half a million people displaced by the current war and by earlier fighting between non-Arab rebel groups and the Arab militias known as the Janjaweed who evolved into the RSF.

In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global food monitor, determined that famine was taking place in Zamzam, and possibly in other camps inside al-Fashir. The attack took place days after the World Food Programme managed to complete its first deliveries to Zamzam in months.

PEOPLE FLEE IN PANIC, VOLUNTEER SAYS

"The terrified screams of children can be heard from inside their tents," the committee said in a post on Facebook on Monday. 

Video sent to several media organisations by volunteers showed tents erected by people newly arrived in Zamzam abandoned after the shelling. One volunteer described people panicking and fleeing in all directions from the shelling.

Some fighters from the Joint Forces - comprised of former Darfur rebel groups who have aligned with the army - have been present in Zamzam throughout the war, making it a safe haven from the fighting in al-Fashir until this week.

Yale Humanitarian Lab, which monitors humanitarian crises around the world, said in a report in November that it had observed the "creation of defensive positions in Zamzam consistent with the expectation of attack in the near future," but did not specify who had constructed them.

"Our forces are committed to ensuring the safety of civilians and seek by all means to spare them the dangers of fighting, and will move forcefully to defeat ... the mercenaries and militias and destroy their last strongholds in al-Fashir," the RSF said in a statement on Monday.

The RSF controls most of wider North Darfur, and has attacked villages mainly populated by non-Arab tribes with arson. The army has also carried out air strikes in surrounding towns.

At least 84 families fled the fighting in Zamzam and al-Fashir on Sunday and Monday, the International Organisation for Migration said on Tuesday.

Some have sought refuge in the town of Tawila and other pockets in the region controlled by forces from the Sudan Liberation Army loyal to Abdelwahid Nur, a rebel group that has remained neutral in the war, according to Adam Rojal of the Coordinating Committee for Displaced People.

But that area is itself at emergency levels of hunger according to the IPC, and has few resources to deal with the influx.