Bombs hit homes, markets and bus stations across Sudan, often killing dozens of civilians at once. Ethnic rampages, accompanied by rape and looting, have occurred in the western region of Darfur, killing thousands.

And a video clip confirmed by United Nations officials shows Sudanese soldiers parading through the streets of a major city, triumphantly brandishing the decapitated heads of students killed because of their ethnicity.

The horrors of Sudan’s expanding civil war are vividly laid out in a new United Nations report. It draws on satellite images, photos, videos and interviews with over 300 victims and witnesses to illustrate the enormous loss of life after ten months of fighting.

Many likely war crimes occurred as part of the bitter fight for control of Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries, which began in April 2023 with clashes between the country’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to the report by the U.N. human rights body found.

The fight began as a power struggle between the leaders of the military, which dominated Sudan for decades, and the RSF, which is mainly based in Darfur. But it quickly escalated into a nationwide conflict with catastrophic consequences for the 46 million people in Sudan.

Both sides carried out indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Women and children were raped or raped multiple times. The recruitment of child soldiers is widespread.

Foreign powers, including the United Arab Emirates and Iran, have backed one side or the other and sent sophisticated weapons, including armed drones, to the battlefield, accelerating the pace of fighting and increasing the already high risks to civilians. Diplomatic efforts by the United States and Saudi Arabia to negotiate even a modest ceasefire have been unsuccessful.

And the brutality has become more open. The students who were beheaded in the town of El-Obeid in central Sudan were apparently slaughtered in the belief that they were supporting the Rapid Support Forces, a Nairobi-based spokesman for the U.N. human rights office, Seif Manango, told reporters.

Sudan’s military said it is investigating the videodescribed the content as “shocking” and promised to hold all perpetrators accountable.

Despite mounting evidence of atrocities – and warnings from aid groups that parts of Sudan are affected on the way to famine – The international focus on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine has largely overshadowed the crisis in Sudan.

A United Nations appeal for $2.7 billion in humanitarian assistance to Sudan generated less than 4 percent of these funds – $97 million – forcing the UN to dip into its emergency reserves to meet the most urgent need for food and shelter.

The war in Sudan has forced eight million people to flee their homes, creating one of the world’s largest displacement crises. Almost 1.5 million refugees have fled to neighboring countries, particularly South Sudan, Chad and Egypt. According to the World Health Organization, around 80 percent of hospitals in conflict areas are closed.

But even as the vulnerable starve, aid deliveries are hampered by attacks on aid convoys and impunity prevails. Despite reports of “death, suffering and despair” since the war in Sudan began, there is “no end in sight to the abuses against civilians,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

The U.N. report found that both sides detained civilians, including women and children, and often tortured those they suspected of collaborating with their enemies. However, it said the vast majority of sexual assaults appeared to have been committed by the Rapid Support Forces and affiliated militias, citing one incident in which a victim was detained and gang-raped by RSF troops for 35 days.

The report said additional victims were killed as they tried to stop fighters from attacking their family members, and that members of ethnic African groups were particularly targeted by RSF-affiliated fighters with ethnic Arab backgrounds.

At least 14,600 people were killed in the conflict. according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit organization that collects data on conflict, although the actual number of casualties is almost certainly much higher due to the difficulty of collecting data in a war zone. A report submitted to the UN Security Council last month said: obtained from The TimesUN investigators estimated that up to 15,000 people were killed in just one attack by the RSF and allied forces on the town of Geneina in Darfur in November.

In response to the RSF advance, the Sudanese military has dropped crude barrel bombs on homes and camps in the Darfur and Kordofan regions, often killing dozens of civilians at once.

The evidence of widespread atrocities comes as the war has taken several dramatic turns in recent months and evidence of foreign interference is mounting.

The Emirates has been secretly supplying the Rapid Support Forces with armed drones, surface-to-air missiles and other sophisticated weapons since last summer. according to United Nations investigators and diplomatsand helped the Sudanese group capture a number of major cities in Darfur in December, as well as the key town of Wad Madani south of Khartoum.

The shock of Wad Madani’s fall prompted the Sudanese military to go on the offensive again and launch a major attack To recapture parts of Omdurman from the RSFa city across the Nile from Khartoum.

In that battle, the army recaptured some territory, one of its first major victories since the war began, although it had to turn to Iran to obtain armed drones to advance its campaign – a potential source of tension with the military’s other backer, Egypt, whose military support appears to have waned in recent months.

Army efforts in Omdurman have also been boosted by the arrival of Darfur rebel groups that once fought the Sudanese army but are now allied with the force in the fight against the RSF, their common enemy.

The space for peace talks appears to be shrinking. Efforts led by America and Saudi Arabia to broker even a modest ceasefire through talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah proved unsuccessful.

The American ambassador to Sudan, John Godfrey, who led these discussions, said on Friday that he resigned. No replacement has been announced Reports that the State Department will soon appoint a special envoy to Sudan.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday condemned a decision by the Sudanese military to ban the passage of aid supplies to RSF-controlled areas from Chad, as well as the RSF’s looting of aid supplies and harassment of humanitarian workers.

RSF leader Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan appeared to take a victory lap in late December and early January as he toured six African countries aboard an Emirati jet, shaking hands with powerful leaders including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Kenyan President William Ruto .

Representatives of the warring parties have held back-channel talks in the Gulf state of Bahrain in recent weeks with support from the Emirates and Egypt, diplomats and news reports said. But these discussions have achieved little so far.

In February, a senior Sudanese general, Shams al-Din Kabbashi, suggested that peace efforts had reached an impasse.

While the Sudanese military “carries an olive branch next to the weapon,” it will not engage in political talks until “the military file is completed,” he said in a speech. “We will fight, we will fight, we will fight.”