A regional governor has been killed after publicly blaming the deaths of civilians on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid an expansion of the country’s almost two-month-old war into cities in the west of the country,

West Darfur state governor Khamis Abakar was killed on Wednesday, an armed group he commanded said, hours after he accused the RSF and allied fighters of “genocide“.

Details on his death were unavailable but the Reuters news agency reported that two government sources said the RSF was responsible for the killing.

The Sudanese army also took to social media to accuse the RSF of “kidnapping and assassinating” the governor. The killing had added a “new chapter” to the RSF’s “record of barbaric crimes that it has been committing against all the Sudanese people”, the army said on Facebook, calling the incident a “brutal act”.

The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mini Arko Minawi, the governor of the Darfur region, said the slain provincial governor of West Darfur was abducted and killed hours after giving an interview to a television station.

Abakar had told Al Hadath TV earlier on Wednesday that civilians were being killed and international intervention was required.

“Civilians are being killed randomly and in large numbers,” he had said.

Fighting in Sudan has led to a new wave of violence in Darfur

Video footage circulating on social media late on Wednesday appeared to show a group of armed men, some wearing RSF uniforms, detaining Abakar. Other clips purportedly showed the governor on the ground with wounds to his neck and face.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that the conflict in Sudan had displaced more than 2 million people, and escalating attacks in Darfur could amount to “crimes against humanity”.

In el-Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur, the RSF and allied fighters have rampaged through the city over the past week, killing and wounding hundreds of people, according to local activists and UN officials. Activists and residents in el-Geneina also reported that dozens of women were sexually attacked inside their homes and while trying to flee the fighting. Almost all rape cases were blamed on the RSF, which has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Volker Perthes, the UN envoy in Sudan, said on Tuesday that as the situation deteriorated in Darfur, he was alarmed by the situation in el-Geneina, which had taken on an “ethnic dimension”.

“There is an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities, allegedly committed by Arab militias and some armed men in Rapid Support Force [RSF]’s uniform,” Perthes said in a statement.

“These reports are deeply worrying and, if verified, could amount to crimes against humanity,” he said.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, also condemned “the shocking violence” in el-Geneina.

She warned in a statement on Tuesday that such fighting could turn into “renewed campaigns of rape, murder, and ethnic cleansing amounting to atrocity crimes”.

Darfur was the scene of genocidal war in the early 2000s, when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination. Former President Omar al-Bashir’s government was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab fighters, known as the “Janjaweed”, who targeted civilians. Millions were displaced and an estimated 300,000 were killed in attacks attributed to “Janjaweed” fighters, who later evolved into the RSF and became a legalised governmental force in 2017.

In a statement, the RSF called the fighting in el-Geneina a tribal conflict, blaming the country’s former regime for fanning the flames. It said it had been making efforts to get aid into the city. (Al Jazeera)

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