🔗 Share this article

The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a healthcare worker over a three-year period in the El Fasher South medical facility as the city became seized last Sunday by the RSF fighters. She was actively caring for the sick, among them an older female patient in need of a transfusion, when the attack began.

“Six injured soldiers were killed plus civilian patients in their beds – including some women,” she recounts. “I am unaware of the fate to my other patients. I was forced to flee when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and thigh as RSF fighters took control of the nearby military headquarters. She ran from the urban area and walked for a day, hurt and lacking sustenance, to arrive at Garney town. “On the way, they confiscated my phone and currency,” she says. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

More than 1,000 people – including women and children – walked for two days to arrive at Tawila town within North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which was seized after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

Tawila, approximately 34 miles westward of El Fasher, remains under the authority by the SLA faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

This past Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – blamed the RSF for slaughtering in excess of 2,000 non-combatants after the city's capture. The UN said that footage existed showing “dozens of unarmed men who were shot or found dead, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Historical Background

Conflict erupted within Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 when an intensifying power struggle among the two primary factions within the military government eventually resulted in fatalities.

On one side stand the Sudanese military forces, who remain broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him are the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an assembly of militia groups who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab counterinsurgency militia called the Janjaweed, which quickly became synonymous with massive human rights violations. During 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the RSF, deploying them to crush a recent insurrection in southern Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in modern times, according to UN officials. It has created the globe's most severe displacement emergency, forcing more than 10 million persons internally plus 4 million who escaped into neighbouring countries, putting mounting pressure on both Chad and South Sudan.

Ongoing Developments

Per observer reports, many additional civilians continue to be held by the RSF and associated armed groups within Garney, southwest from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the Joint Forces and other militant organizations which had been combatting together with the army. They are reportedly being held because they cannot afford ransom requests ranging from 5 to 10 million Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), per those who escaped who reached Tawila. People who cannot afford payment remain imprisoned for several days, and sometimes let go solely after developing critical health conditions.

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

A man named Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a motorist originating from Sennar within central Sudan, closely avoided death following his capture by three camel-riding militiamen in the Garney vicinity.

“They wanted to cut my head off using a knife,” he recounts, showing his arm, which one militant assaulted with the stock of a Kalashnikov. “Afterward one remembered me – his brother was my colleague – and pleaded with them to spare me. Our group contained 18 individuals who left El Fasher together, but only eight made it to Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub says he witnessed 22 deceased individuals close to what he described as a fraudulent water source utilized by RSF forces and partner armed groups along the Garney-Tawila route. “This is an ambush,” he says. “People walk all day without water, and when they reach it, the militiamen await. They murdered 22 males at that location and took the bodies away to obscure them.”

An additional nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility following Sunday's assault said RSF fighters entered through one gate and commenced firing upon patients in the ER section, murdering no less than eight. “We escaped through a different gate, however they struck my head using a rifle,” he states.

Via a recorded message this past Wednesday, the leader of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or officer who had “violated the right of any individual would face consequences.

Several people who got away from El Fasher passed hours concealing themselves near military artillery before running west under darkness's protection. Previously displaced households from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were forced to move again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood prior to ultimately traveling to Tawila.

People apprehended by RSF forces in Garney were reportedly given {water mixed with flour|flour