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A nurse named Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a nurse for the past three years in the El Fasher South medical facility after the city fell captured on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was busy treating patients, including an elderly woman who needed a blood transfusion, when the offensive started.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel plus civilian patients in their beds – among them female victims,” she states. “I don’t know what happened to my other patients. I had to run when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and her thigh while RSF combatants gained control of the closeby army headquarters. She escaped from the city and traveled on foot for one day, wounded and without nourishment, to get to the settlement of Garney. “Along the route, they confiscated my phone and currency,” she says. “I ended up with nothing.”

In excess of 1,000 persons – including women and children – journeyed by walking for 48 hours to arrive at Tawila town in North Darfur following their escape from El Fasher, which fell under control after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

The town of Tawila, approximately 34 miles westward from El Fasher, is under the control of the Sudan Liberation Army faction under Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur's leadership.

On Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – accused the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. The UN reported there were videos showing “dozens of unarmed men who were shot or found dead, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Background Context

Fighting broke out in Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 when an intensifying power struggle involving the two key groups of the military regime finally turned deadly.

Among the combatants exist the official Sudanese army, who remain broadly loyal towards General al-Burhan, the de facto head of state. Challenging him exist the irregular troops of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militias who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was originally established by the previous authoritarian leader Bashir's regime as an Arab counterinsurgency militia known as the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with extensive brutalities. Back in 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the Rapid Support Forces, deploying them to crush a new uprising in South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into a terrible humanitarian disaster in modern times, according to UN officials. It has created the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, dispersing over 10 million individuals inside the nation plus 4 million who escaped to bordering states, creating increasing strain on Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

According to witnesses, thousands more civilians stay confined by RSF forces and associated armed groups in the Garney area, in the southwestern direction from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the collaborative forces and other militant organizations that had been fighting alongside the army. They are apparently detained since they cannot pay extortion payments ranging from 5 to 10 million Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), based on survivor accounts who reached Tawila. People who cannot afford payment have been held for multiple days, and occasionally freed only when falling seriously ill.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted government troops fleeing El Fasher to come into Tawila provided they give up their weapons.

The individual Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a driver from Sennar within central Sudan, narrowly escaped being killed after being captured by three camel-riding militiamen close to Garney.

“They planned to decapitate me using a knife,” he informs, showing his arm, which one militant assaulted using an AK-47 rifle butt. “Subsequently one identified me – his sibling had collaborated with me – and pleaded with them to spare me. There were 18 of us who exited El Fasher as a group, but only eight made it to Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub states he saw 22 bodies in proximity to what he termed a deceptive well used by the RSF and partner armed groups in the area connecting Garney and Tawila. “It’s a trap,” he says. “Persons journey daily without hydration, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They slaughtered 22 men on that spot and took the bodies away to obscure them.”

An additional nurse who ran from South El Fasher hospital after the attack on Sunday said RSF fighters entered using one doorway and commenced firing upon patients in the ER section, murdering no less than eight. “We ran out via another entrance, but they hit me on the head with a firearm,” he recounts.

Through a video declaration last Wednesday, the leader of the RSF, General Dagalo, known as Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or official who breached the rights of any civilian would be punished.

Numerous individuals who fled El Fasher spent hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before running west during nighttime. Already displaced families from the city’s Abu Shouk camp had to displace once more, taking asylum in the Daraja Oula district before eventually heading for Tawila.

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