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03-11-2025
KHARTOUM: Starved and abused civilians have recounted harrowing stories after fleeing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in western Sudan’s Darfur, while thousands more remain missing.
The capital of North Darfur state was the last Sudanese army stronghold in the vast region before falling to the RSF after 18 months of siege on Sunday.
Since then, the United Nations and international aid agencies have raised the alarm over the fate of civilians as accounts of mass killings, rape and other abuses continue to emerge.
Alkheir Ismail, a young Sudanese man who has fled to the town of Tawila, some 50km (31 miles) away, said he was among a group of 300 people who were stopped by RSF fighters as they tried to escape el-Fasher on Sunday. The fighters only spared him because one of the captors recognized him from his school days, he added.
“There was a young man I studied with, in the university in Khartoum, he told them, ‘Don’t kill him’. After that, they killed the rest of the people, the youths with me and my friends.”
Other Sudanese in Tawila also described the fear they experienced after being stopped by fighters.
“All of a sudden they showed up, from where I don’t know. Three young men showed up, different ages. They shot in the air, and said, ‘Stop, stop’. They were wearing RSF clothes,” Tahani Hassan said. “They hit us hard. They threw our clothes on the ground. Even I, as a woman, was searched. The attacker, he could be younger than my daughter.”
Fatima Abdulrahim, who fled with her grandchildren, said she walked for five days in brutal conditions to reach Tawila.
“They beat the boys and took everything we owned; they left us with nothing. After we arrived here, we learned that the girls in the group that came after us had been raped, but our girls escaped,” she said.
Rawaa Abdalla, a young woman who fled the city, said her father is missing.
‘We don’t know whether he’s alive or dead, whether he’s with the people who left or if he’s injured,” she said.
In a speech on Wednesday night, RSF head Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations will be prosecuted.
On Thursday, the paramilitary group, which has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, claimed to have arrested several fighters accused of abuses, but UN humanitarian affairs chief Tom Fletcher questioned the RSF’s commitment to investigating violations.
A high-level RSF commander called the accounts “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters “to cover up for their defeat and loss” of el-Fasher, according to media.
Both the RSF and the army have faced war crimes accusations over the course of the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, forced some 14 million from their homes and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN. Famine is widespread while outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases are on the rise.
More than 62,000 people fled el-Fasher between Sunday and Wednesday, according to the UN. As of late August, el-Fasher was still home to 260,000 people.
In a statement on Friday, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF) said agencies operating on the ground estimate that only a little over 5,000 people managed to make their way to Tawila over the past five days. (Int’l News Desk)
