Hamid Abdulsalam / UNAMID A landscape view of El Geneina town, the capital of West Darfur, Sudan.

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 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.

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.