‘They murdered civilians while they slept’: mayhem and cruelty dominate after fall of El Fasher

The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a healthcare worker for the past three years at El Fasher South hospital after the city fell captured on Sunday by the RSF fighters. She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman in need of a transfusion, when the attack began.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel along with civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she says. “The outcome remains unknown regarding my other patients. I had to run as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and her thigh while RSF combatants gained control of the nearby military headquarters. She escaped from the city and walked for a day, injured and without food, to reach the town of Garney. “Along the route, they took my phone and cash,” she explains. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

In excess of 1,000 persons – including women and children – journeyed by walking for 48 hours to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which fell under control following an 18-month blockade.

This settlement, around 55 kilometers to the west of El Fasher, remains under the authority of the Sudan Liberation Army faction under Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur's leadership.

Last Tuesday, the Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – blamed the RSF for slaughtering in excess of 2,000 non-combatants after the city's capture. The UN reported there were videos depicting dozens of weaponless men being shot or lying dead, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Background Context

Conflict erupted in Sudan's capital on 15 April 2023 when an intensifying power struggle among the two primary factions within the military government finally turned deadly.

Among the combatants stand the Sudanese military forces, which maintain general loyalty to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him exist the irregular troops belonging to the RSF, an assembly of militia groups who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces were first created by the previous authoritarian leader Bashir's regime as a pro-Arab counterinsurgency force called the Janjaweed, which soon became linked with extensive brutalities. During 2013, Bashir transformed the group to become the RSF, sending them to suppress a new uprising within South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into among the most severe humanitarian crises in modern times, according to UN officials. It has produced the world’s worst displacement crisis, forcing more than 10 million persons internally along with 4 million refugees to adjacent nations, creating increasing strain on both Chad and South Sudan.

Current Situation Updates

Based on eyewitness accounts, many additional civilians stay confined by RSF forces and associated armed groups within Garney, southwest from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the collaborative forces and other militant organizations that had been fighting alongside the army. They are reportedly being held because they cannot afford ransom demands of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), based on survivor accounts who reached Tawila. Individuals incapable of paying have been detained for days, and sometimes freed only when becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has reportedly allowed military personnel escaping El Fasher to enter Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

The individual Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a driver from Sennar in central Sudan, barely avoided execution after being captured by three armed men mounted on camels close to Garney.

“They wanted to cut my head off with a knife,” he tells, displaying his arm, that one combatant struck with the butt of an AK-47 rifle. “Afterward one remembered me – his brother was my colleague – and urged them not to execute me. We were 18 people who exited El Fasher as a group, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub states he saw 22 bodies near what he called a deceptive well utilized by RSF forces and partner armed groups along the Garney-Tawila route. “This is an ambush,” he says. “Persons journey daily without hydration, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They killed 22 men there and carried the bodies off to obscure them.”

An additional nurse who ran from South El Fasher hospital subsequent to Sunday's offensive said RSF fighters entered using one doorway and commenced firing upon patients within the emergency department, murdering no less than eight. “We escaped through a different gate, but they hit me on the head using a rifle,” he says.

Via a recorded message last Wednesday, the RSF commander, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, declared that any fighter or official who breached the rights of any person” would be held accountable.

Many of those who escaped from El Fasher passed hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before running west under darkness's protection. Previously displaced households originating from the urban Abu Shouk settlement were forced to move again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before finally moving toward Tawila.

Individuals seized by the RSF in Garney were reportedly given {water mixed with flour|flour