Khartoum, November 4: Only a few thousand Sudanese have managed to reach safety since paramilitary forces captured the North Darfur city of el-Fasher last week, aid groups said on Sunday, raising alarm over tens of thousands feared trapped amid reports of killings and other atrocities.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized full control of el-Fasher after ousting the Sudanese army from the city, ending an 18-month siege and tightening their hold on the entire Darfur region. The takeover has triggered a new wave of displacement and violence in Sudan’s 19-month-long civil war.
Videos and witness testimonies circulating since the city’s fall describe widespread abuses, including beatings, killings and sexual assaults by RSF fighters. The World Health Organization said at least 460 people were killed in a hospital during the fighting.
Tens of thousands are believed to have fled el-Fasher, according to the U.N. migration agency. But fewer than 6,000 have reached the nearest camp for displaced people in Tawila, some 65 km (40 miles) away, said Shashwat Saraf, Sudan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which operates the site.
“The numbers are still very few. We are not seeing the hundreds of thousands that we were expecting,” Saraf told The Associated Press by phone. “If people are still in el-Fasher, it will be very difficult for them to survive.”
Aid workers said survivors arriving at Tawila are dehydrated, bruised and traumatised after days of walking through areas controlled by gunmen. Around 170 unaccompanied children — some as young as three — reached the camp without family members, the NRC said.
The fall of el-Fasher marks a major turning point in the war between the RSF and Sudan’s armed forces, which began in April 2023 after months of tension between the two factions. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. estimates, and displaced over 14 million. Disease outbreaks and famine have deepened the humanitarian crisis.
In a news conference in Cairo, Sudan’s ambassador Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi accused the RSF of committing war crimes in el-Fasher and urged the international community to label the group a terrorist organisation. He renewed his government’s accusation that the United Arab Emirates has been supplying weapons to the RSF — a claim the UAE has repeatedly denied.
Speaking at the Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, senior UAE diplomat Anwar Gargash declined to address the accusations directly but said the international community made a “critical mistake” in backing both military leaders — army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — when they ousted a civilian government in 2021.
Gargash said the UAE supports a three-month humanitarian ceasefire followed by negotiations leading to a civilian transitional government within nine months.
Meanwhile, fears are growing that the RSF, emboldened by its control of Darfur, may push further toward central Sudan. The Sudan Doctor Network said 12 people, including five children, were killed in RSF attacks on two camps for displaced people in the central Kordofan region on Saturday.
