Aid workers in the region fear the situation will deteriorate as food and medical supplies dwindle.
United Nations officials have condemned mass killings by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s el-Fasher and warned the UN Security Council that the city has “descended into an even darker hell”.
The RSF took over el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, on Sunday after forcing Sudan’s army to withdraw from its last stronghold in the western Darfur region.
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“The situation is simply horrifying,” Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations for Africa, told a Security Council emergency session on Thursday.
She said that the UN Human Rights Office has received credible reports of mass killings, summary executions and house-to-house searches as civilians attempted to flee.
“The situation is chaotic. In this context, it is difficult to estimate the number of civilians killed. Despite commitments to protect civilians, the reality is that no one is safe in el-Fasher,” she said. “There is no safe passage for civilians to leave the city.”
Residents in the city were being subjected to “horrors” the United Nations’ humanitarian chief said.
The city was “already the scene of catastrophic levels of human suffering, [but] has descended into an even darker hell,” Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council.
There were “credible reports of widespread executions after Rapid Support Forces fighters entered the city”, Fletcher said.
“We cannot hear the screams, but – as we sit here today – the horror is continuing. Women and girls are being raped, people [are] being mutilated and killed with utter impunity.”
Survivors recall attacks
For 18 months before Sudan’s army withdrew from the city, an RSF siege had trapped hundreds of thousands of people inside without food or essentials.
More than 36,000 people have fled since Saturday, largely on foot, to Tawila, a town around 70km (43 miles) west that is already sheltering roughly 650,000 displaced people.
“There was a lot of shelling,” Fatima Abdulrahman, a woman displaced from el-Fasher, told media from Tawila. “I myself have been affected by shells. Shelling killed my daughter, injured my other daughter’s eye and paralysed my son. My body is full of wounds and is swollen.”
The fall of el-Fasher to the RSF could herald another split of Sudan, more than a decade after South Sudan’s creation. The latest war started in April 2023, when tension between the military and RSF exploded into fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The ensuing conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million.
“What is happening in the city of el-Fasher is not an isolated incident,” Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed, Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council. “Rather, it is a continuation of a systematic pattern of killing and ethnic cleansing that this militia has carried out since its rebellion in April 2023.”
More than 300 Colombians have been fighting in Sudan’s war. Why are they there? pic.twitter.com/iKSryvNG2V
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media’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said thousands of people are continuing to flee el-Fasher. More than 652,000 people are internally displaced due to the conflict, according to the International Organization for Migration.
“Shelling and drone attacks were happening all the time,” Aisha Ismael, a woman displaced from el-Fasher, told media from Tawila. “They hit us with the backs of their rifles day and night unless we hid in the houses.”
Fears of worsening conditions
Aid workers in Tawila fear conditions in the region will deteriorate as more internally displaced persons arrive from el-Fasher and food and medical supplies continue to dwindle.
“The conditions are catastrophic, as we’ve been hearing,” Mary Brace, technical protection advisor for Nonviolent Peaceforce, told media. “The conflict is ongoing, and there is no guarantee of safe passage for civilians as they try to come towards Tawila.”
Aid workers’ immediate concerns are providing those fleeing el-Fasher with food, water and emergency medical attention.
“The last months have been absolutely harrowing,” Brace told media. “People were talking about just the extreme fear of constant bombardment. The numbers of displaced people here, it’s just absolutely astounding. There’s just extreme levels of trauma.”
‘Genocide’
In a grim speech to the UN Security Council, Al-Harith Mohamed called the events unfolding in el-Fasher a “genocide by all legal standards and definitions”.
“Women and girls are attacked in broad daylight,” he said, adding that Sudan is wondering “Where is the Security Council?”
The Sudanese ambassador called on the UN to condemn the RSF’s actions and designate the group as a “terrorist” organisation, demand the paramilitary group leave el-Fasher, enforce a year-old arms embargo related to the conflict, and sanction any outside forces supporting the RSF.
Last year, the UN called on countries to stop supplying weapons to parties in the conflict in Sudan. A Security Council committee previously also sanctioned two generals from the RSF for destabilising the country through violence and human rights abuses.
