🔗 Share this article

The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been serving as a healthcare worker over a three-year period within the South El Fasher hospital when the city was taken over on Sunday by RSF paramilitaries. She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman in need of a transfusion, when the attack began.

“Six injured soldiers were killed along with civilians in their beds – among them female victims,” she says. “I am unaware of the fate regarding my other patients. I was forced to flee when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and her thigh during the RSF's seizure of the nearby military headquarters. She ran from the urban area and traveled on foot for one day, wounded and without nourishment, to arrive at Garney town. “On the way, they seized my mobile and currency,” she says. “I was left with nothing.”

Over a thousand individuals – including women and children – walked for two days to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which was seized following an 18-month blockade.

Tawila, approximately 34 miles westward away from El Fasher, is governed by of the Sudan Liberation Army faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

This past Tuesday, the Joint Forces – which partner with Sudan's military – blamed the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians following the urban center's takeover. The UN reported that visual evidence showed depicting dozens of weaponless men either being shot or deceased, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Background Context

Conflict erupted in Sudan's capital on 15 April 2023 as an escalating power struggle among the two primary factions of the military regime eventually resulted in fatalities.

From one perspective exist the official Sudanese army, that stay mostly faithful to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto head of state. Opposing him stand the paramilitary forces belonging to the RSF, an assembly of militia groups which support the ex-warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab anti-rebellion militia known as the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with widespread atrocities. During 2013, Bashir converted the organization into the Rapid Support Forces, using them to quell a new uprising in southern Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in modern times, according to UN officials. It has produced the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, scattering more than 10 million people within the country and 4 million who have fled into neighbouring countries, putting mounting pressure on both Chad and South Sudan.

Ongoing Developments

Per observer reports, numerous more non-combatants continue to be held by the RSF and allied militias in Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Numerous are ex-military personnel belonging to the Sudanese military, the allied Joint Forces and other armed groups that were previously aligned with the military. Reports indicate they're imprisoned as they lack funds for ransom demands between five and ten million Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), according to survivors who made it to Tawila. Those unable to pay remain imprisoned for several days, and in some cases released only after becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted army soldiers running from El Fasher to come into Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

A man named Adam Yagoub, 28, a driver from Sennar in central Sudan, barely avoided execution subsequent to his seizure by three armed men mounted on camels in the Garney vicinity.

“They intended to behead me with a knife,” he informs, showing his arm, which one of the fighters hit using an AK-47 rifle butt. “Afterward one remembered me – his brother was my colleague – and urged them not to execute me. We were 18 people who left El Fasher together, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub states he witnessed 22 deceased individuals near what he called a fraudulent water source utilized by RSF forces and allied militias in the area connecting Garney and Tawila. “This is an ambush,” he says. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and upon arriving there, the militias are waiting. They killed 22 men there and carried the bodies off to conceal them.”

An additional nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility subsequent to Sunday's offensive said RSF fighters entered via one entrance and began shooting at patients within the emergency department, murdering no less than eight. “We fled through another gate, but they hit me on the head using a rifle,” he recounts.

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

Several people who got away El Fasher spent hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before fleeing west during nighttime. Previously displaced households from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were compelled to relocate again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before eventually heading for Tawila.

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