Johannesburg — A powerful paramilitary force fighting the government in Sudan's raging two-and-a-half-year civil war claimed over the weekend to have captured the city of El-Fasher, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been trapped, cut off from the world for months.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the French news agency AFP that the violence around El-Fasher, the last city in the Darfur region not held by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries, "represents a terrible escalation in the conflict."

"The level of suffering that we are witnessing in Sudan is unbearable," he said.

Reports circulating on social media on Sunday said RSF forces had taken control of the Sudanese Armed Forces' 6th Division Headquarters in El-Fasher.

A desk bearing signs of

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