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Report accuses paramilitary force of crimes including ethnic cleansing in systemic campaign against civiliansThe Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during its campaign to capture El Fasher, Amnesty International has alleged.Many of the crimes, including murder, torture, rape, enslavement and sexual slavery, were carried out as part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians and amounted to crimes against humanity, the human rights organisation said in a report released on Wednesday.

Sudanese paramilitaries committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during their campaign to seize the city of el-Fasher last year, a rights group report says.

The siege and takeover of the city in the western region of Darfur marked one of the bloodiest episodes in Sudan's civil war between Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

"The RSF's crimes included murder, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, other forms of sexual violence, enslavement, extermination and persecution," said an Amnesty investigations released on Wednesday.

The RSF has not commented on the Amnesty report but has denied previous such accusations.

Sudan remains locked in a three‑year power struggle between the regular army and the RSF paramilitaries. The ongoing civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and forced more than 14 million people from their homes.

Widespread sexual violence against men, women and children is being used as a weapon of war, the UN says.

Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been accused of war crimes, which they deny.

After being forced out of the capital, Khartoum, in March last year, the RSF shifted its focus to consolidating its control of the western Darfur region by capturing el-Fasher, and extending its reach into the Kordofan states in the south of the country.

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Amnesty believes RSF fighters committed grave human rights violations in and around el-Fasher during its 18-month siege of the city.