Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, has rampaged through several towns in Gezira state, south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. 

The fighters from the notorious paramilitary brutally killed at least 120 civilians in a multiday attack, according to diverse media reports and the United Nations. Other sources, however, have spoken of hundreds of civilian casualties in the past few days.

Scores of people were injured and more than 47,000 displaced in these latest attacks, according to the UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA.

The latest massacre is a continuation of the brutality of the war that broke out in April 2023 when tensions between Sudan's army, the SAF, and the RSF exploded into open fighting.

Since then, almost 25,000 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data group which has been monitoring the conflict since it started.

In a report released on Wednesday, a UN fact-finding mission documented large-scale sexual violence in areas under RSF control and said there were reasonable grounds to believe these acts amounted to war crimes.

The humanitarian situation in the country is considered catastrophic.

Retaliation for defecting fighters

Observers have pointed to the defection of Abu Aqla Keikel, a former RSF commander in Gezira state, as the trigger for these retaliatory attacks.

Keikel reportedly switched sides on October 20 when he and his troops defected to the SAF.

But the RSF violence was not only directed against the defectors but also against the communities in the eastern part of the province where Keikel hails from.

"Kill a young Keikel before he grows up," the RSF fighters are said to have chanted, among other slogans calling for the extermination of what they called "traitors," according to a report by the Sudanese NGO Fikra for Studies and Development.

Fikra said the paramilitary group killed 300 people in the city of Tamboul on a single day, October 22, after launching a similar attack on Rufaa the day before, "resulting in 100 deaths, rape of women, and numerous cases of kidnapping and disappearance of girls."

Some 100 other villages in the east Gezira were raided in the multiday rampage, Fikra reported.

RSF fighters are underage, heavily drugged

"Such violence is unfortunately not new in itself," Marina Peter, chair of the German-based Sudan and South Sudan Forum, told DW.

Comparable atrocities occurred in the first Darfur war in the early 2000s, she said.

"At that time, too, there was terrible brutality, people were burned to death, fugitives were shot, civilians were tortured, and women were raped en masse," she said.

That the RSF fighters are young and heavily drugged adds to the brutality, Peter said. "Some of them are child soldiers and completely uninhibited by the drugs," she said.

According to Ahmed Esam, an activist at the NGO Sudan Uprising Germany, the RFS massacres aren't just about seizing land and agriculture.

"Rather, it is about intimidating civil society, which, despite war and violence, continues to advocate the original concerns of the protest movement which is the transition from a military to a civilian government in Sudan," he told DW.

The protest movement that began in 2018 led to the ouster of longtime authoritarian president Omar al-Bashir in 2019, but a coup in 2021 saw the military seize power.

In addition, the RSF is pursuing the strategic goal of preventing civilians from joining the Popular Defense Forces, or PDF, a paramilitary group that fights alongside the army against the RSF militias, he said.

Army 'trying to outsource the war to third parties'

But Esam also sees the army as playing a big part in the high civilian death toll in Sudan. The mere founding of the PDF is irresponsible and sheds a telling light on the army's actions, he said.

"The army is mobilizing civilians without offering them adequate protection," he said. "They hand them weapons and tell them to defend themselves against the RSF forces, but they have no chance against experienced militias and when the RSF forces attack the civilians, the army does nothing to protect them," he said. 

The Sudanese army is also extremely brutal, said Esam. "The military primarily uses its air force which is not equipped with precision weapons," he said, adding that this is one reason why so many civilians die in the attacks.

As he sees it, the army "is trying to outsource the war to third parties, especially to the civilians, who have absolutely no experience with it," which is also contributing to the rising death toll.

This view is echoed by Peter, who sees more and more groups "getting involved in the war."

Ethnic militias, Islamist militias from the circle of former dictator al-Bashir, and militias with links to Sudan's secret service, are increasingly fighting on the front lines.

"The war is becoming ever more confusing, and this means that the chances of ending it are dwindling," she said.

Cease-fire remains unlikely 

In an October briefing paper, the International Crisis Group, an independent organization working to prevent conflict, warned that "rebel groups from neighboring countries could increase their support to the belligerents."

In consequence, "the conflict's expansion could extend violence into neighboring countries by involving cross-border armed groups. ... Embroiling more actors in the turmoil risks exacerbating hostilities."

For the time being, the Crisis Group experts also remain skeptical about international mediation given that the conflict parties are receiving strong external support from regional actors, including Arab states and Russia.

This article was originally written in German.