At least two people were killed this week when Sudan's Rapid Support Forces intensified shelling on Abo Shouk displacement camp in North Darfur, according to aid officials and local camp representatives on April 2, 2025. The camp, in el-Fasher, houses around 450,000 displaced people and has been attacked repeatedly over the past 11 months.
Adam Rijal, spokesman for the Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, said two deaths had been confirmed after attacks that intensified on Monday. He said the RSF was firing artillery indiscriminately and deliberately, and that four injuries had been reported by Tuesday, though he expected the number to be higher. The shelling also destroyed property inside the camp.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said attacks on Abu Shouk camp had reportedly killed and injured scores of civilians. U.N. humanitarian coordinator Clementine Nkweta-Salami called the continued attacks on civilians across Sudan unlawful and morally indefensible, while U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the situation was gravely alarmed and worsening.
Darfur governor Mini Arko Minawi accused the RSF of trying to exterminate residents of el-Fasher and nearby camps. The Sudanese military still controls el-Fasher despite near-daily strikes. The war, which began in April 2023 between the army and the RSF, has killed at least 20,000 people, displaced more than 14 million and pushed parts of the country into famine, according to the packet.
The camp violence is part of a wider military struggle that has seen the army make gains in Khartoum and elsewhere, including the recapture of the Republican Palace and Khartoum's airport. But for people in North Darfur, the immediate story is the persistence of artillery fire on a camp already housing vast numbers of displaced families with little protection.
AP's report does not say how many of the wounded were in critical condition, only that the number may be higher than first reported. That uncertainty makes the latest death toll a floor, not a ceiling, and underscores how little access civilians and aid workers have to the camp as the war deepens.
Abo Shouk's scale explains why the shelling is so worrying. The camp shelters about 450,000 displaced people, many of them already uprooted by the same war now feeding the attack, and local officials say the camp has been hit on and off for almost a year. That means the deaths on April 2 landed in a place where families had already been living under repeated threat.
The U.N. warnings also suggest that the camp is part of a larger emergency in Darfur. When officials say scores of civilians may have been killed and injured, they are describing a place with limited protection, scarce medical access and artillery fire that can arrive without warning. In that sense the latest attack is not an isolated event but another turn in a siege that has become one of the war's most punishing fronts.
For aid workers, the danger is not only the shelling itself but the difficulty of getting help in. The camp has been under pressure for months, and the wider war has already displaced millions, so even a small attack can hit a huge population with nowhere safe to go. That is why the U.N. statements in the packet were so forceful: they were reacting to a camp that is functioning as both refuge and target.
