🔗 Share this article

The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been serving as a healthcare worker for three years in the El Fasher South medical facility when the city was captured on Sunday by the RSF fighters. She was actively caring for the sick, including an elderly woman requiring a blood transfusion, when the attack began.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel along with civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she states. “The outcome remains unknown for my remaining patients. I needed to escape when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and upper leg while RSF combatants gained control of the nearby military headquarters. She fled the city and traveled on foot for one day, injured and without food, to get to the settlement of Garney. “During the journey, they took my phone and money,” she describes. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

More than 1,000 people – featuring females and minors – walked for two days to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which fell under control after an 18-month siege.

This settlement, about 34 miles (55km) west from El Fasher, remains under the authority of the Sudan Liberation Army faction led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

Last Tuesday, the collaborative Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – charged the RSF for slaughtering in excess of 2,000 non-combatants since the fall of the city. The UN reported that visual evidence showed depicting dozens of weaponless men either being shot or deceased, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Historical Background

Hostilities commenced in Sudan's capital back on April 15, 2023 as a growing contest for power involving the two key groups within the military government eventually resulted in fatalities.

Among the combatants are the Sudanese armed forces, which maintain general loyalty towards General al-Burhan, the de facto head of state. Opposing him are the paramilitaries belonging to the RSF, a collection of militias who follow the former warlord General Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces were first created by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir as a pro-Arab counterinsurgency force known as the Janjaweed, which quickly became synonymous with widespread atrocities. Back in 2013, Bashir reformed the faction into the RSF, deploying them to crush a new uprising in southern Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into a terrible humanitarian disaster in contemporary history, according to UN officials. It has generated the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, forcing more than 10 million persons inside the nation plus 4 million who escaped to adjacent nations, generating growing stress on both Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

According to witnesses, numerous more non-combatants continue to be held by the RSF and allied militias in Garney, southwest from El Fasher. Numerous are ex-military personnel from Sudan's armed forces, the collaborative forces and other armed groups which had been combatting together with the army. They are reportedly being held because they cannot afford ransom requests of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), according to survivors who arrived in Tawila. Those unable to pay have been held for multiple days, and occasionally let go solely after becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has reportedly allowed government troops fleeing El Fasher to enter Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

A man named Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a driver from Sennar in central Sudan, narrowly escaped being killed following his capture by three militiamen on camels close to Garney.

“They intended to behead me with a knife,” he recounts, exhibiting his limb, which one of the fighters hit using an AK-47 rifle butt. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and begged them not to kill me. Our group contained 18 individuals who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub says he saw 22 bodies close to what he described as a deceptive well employed by the RSF and partner armed groups between Garney and Tawila. “It’s a trap,” he says. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and when they get to it, the militias are waiting. They murdered 22 males at that location and removed the corpses to hide them.”

Another nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility after the attack on Sunday stated RSF combatants came in using one doorway and opened fire on patients in the emergency ward, killing at least eight. “We escaped through a different gate, but they hit me on the head using a rifle,” he recounts.

In a video statement on Wednesday, the RSF commander, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, said that any soldier or officer who had “violated the right of any person” would be held accountable.

Several people who got away from El Fasher passed hours concealing themselves near military artillery prior to escaping westward under darkness's protection. Already displaced families from Abu Shouk camp in the city had to displace once more, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood prior to ultimately traveling to Tawila.

People apprehended by RSF forces in Garney were apparently provided {water mixed with flour|flour