Genocide all over again?

First the attackers besieged the city, burning the main market and preventing food and medical supplies from getting in. Then the militiamen proceeded methodically to destroy anything—hospitals, schools, electricity and telecoms—which the people of el-Geneina, in West Darfur, might need to survive. “It was routinised and systematic,” says Nathaniel Raymond, a conflict monitor at Yale University. On June 14th West Darfur’s governor appealed for foreign intervention to stop what he termed “a genocide”. The next day he was murdered in what Mr Raymond calls an “ISIS-style totemic killing”, referring to the jihadists who single out leading opponents for assassination across the Middle East and Africa. In the next 48 hours thousands of el-Geneina’s civilians fled or were killed. Aid-workers, visiting later, described the city as a ghost town.