They built a wall to stop people escaping. Now bodies lie beside it

Cairo: Aid agencies fear the fate of tens of thousands of people who tried to flee the city of El Fasher as it fell to rebel forces in Sudan this week after only 5000 reached the safety of a nearby town. Satellite photos revealed groups of bodies across the city and beside a dirt wall built by fighters to trap people inside.

More than 62,000 people are believed to have fled El Fasher between Sunday and Wednesday, as powerful paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally captured the key city in the Darfur region, having besieged it for 18 months. But far fewer people have made it to the safety of a refugee camp in Tawila, 65 kilometres away, the United Nations migration agency said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs the camp, says only about 5000 people have arrived this week. That has raised fears for the safety of the others who are believed to have fled, amid witness reports that fighters went house-to-house after they entered the city, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults in a rampage.

Groups of gunmen also reportedly killed at least 460 people at a hospital in the city this week, attacking in waves, the World Health Organisation said, abducting doctors and nurses, then gunning down staff, patients and people sheltering there.

Communications are down in the city, aid groups have already been forced out, and many details of the hospital attack and other violence have been slow to emerge. The total death toll remains unknown, but satellite images taken this week have revealed chilling details indicating the breadth of killing in the city since the RSF captured it.

Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab said it had identified 31 clusters of objects consistent with human bodies in satellite images taken since Sunday.

It had also found “very little activity consistent with civilian movement exiting” the city since the RSF took control on October 26.

“This may indicate that there are few civilians alive and able to escape,” the lab said in a report published on Friday. “Indicators consistent with human bodies on the ground continue to proliferate across the city and inside the [constructed earthen] berm.”

For months before entering the city, RSF fighters built the 30-kilometre dirt wall around the city boundaries to try to seal it off and trap people inside. The Yale researchers found evidence of mass killings beside the wall over the past week.

The fall of El Fasher, located deep in a semi-desert region about 800 kilometres south-west of capital Khartoum, heralds a new phase in the brutal, two-year war between the RSF and the military in Africa’s third-largest country.

The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to United Nations figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher. The war has also displaced more than 14 million people and fuelled outbreaks of diseases believed to have killed thousands. Famine has been declared in parts of Darfur, a region the size of Spain, and other parts of the country.

Fatima Abdulrahim, 70, fled with her grandchildren a few days before the city was captured to escape the siege. She described to The Associated Press a harrowing five-day journey to reach Tawila, hiding in trenches and dodging bullets and gunmen.

“We ran on the streets, hiding for 10 minutes behind the berm, then charging out, running until we made it out,” she said, adding that she kept falling and getting up amid gunfire and shelling. Her companions carried her at times, she said.

“Thirst almost killed us,” she said, describing picking grass to eat from the side of the road.

Along the way she witnessed militiamen shoot and kill young men trying to bring food into the city, she said.

“The people dead on the streets were countless,” she said. “I kept covering the eyes of the little ones so they don’t see. Some were injured and beaten and could not move. We pulled some to the paved road, hoping a car would come and take them.”

Some fighters stopped her and the group she was travelling with, took all their belongings and beat the children, she said.

At least 450 people have been admitted to hospital in Tawila, some suffering from severe malnutrition and sexual violence, Adam Rojal, a spokesperson for a local group that works with displaced people in Darfur, said.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said people were arriving at the camp with broken limbs and other wounds, and some with injuries sustained months ago. Many children had arrived at the camp after losing their parents in the fighting.

Hospital attack

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier provided new details about the killings at El Fasher’s Saudi Hospital, which had been the only hospital in the city still providing limited services during the siege.

Gunmen returned to the facility at least three times, Lindmeier told a UN press briefing in Geneva. At first, the fighters came and abducted a number of doctors and nurses, and at least six were still being held, he said. They later returned and “started killing,” he said.

They came a third time and “finished off what was still standing, including other people sheltering in the hospital,” Lindmeier said, without specifying who the attackers were.

A number of grisly videos from the hospital have circulated online showing bodies and at least one fighter shooting a man. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the details of the assault.

The RSF denied committing killings at the hospital. On Thursday, it posted on social media a video filmed at the hospital, showing what it said were some patients at the facility. A person speaking in the video said RSF fighters were caring for the patients and offering them food. At least one wounded man spoke to the reporter.

It was not immediately clear when the video was filmed, although a timestamp stated it was Thursday.

WHO head for humanitarian operations Dr Teresa Zakaria told the briefing that the hospital was offering “limited service” now. But she said that since El Fasher’s seizure on Sunday, “there is no longer any humanitarian health presence in the city, and access has remained blocked”.

Militia accused of repeated mass killings

El-Fasher was the Sudanese military’s last stronghold in Darfur, and its fall secures the RSF’s hold over most of the large western region. That raises fears of a new split in Sudan, with the military holding Khartoum and the country’s north and east.

The RSF and its allied militias have been accused of repeated mass killings and rapes when it controlled the capital Khartoum, and as it has seized towns across Darfur and further south over the past two years – mostly targeting civilians of Central and East African ethnicities.

The RSF is largely made up of fighters from the Arab Janjaweed militia, which is accused of carrying out a government-backed genocidal campaign in Darfur in the 2000s in which some 300,000 people were killed.

The Janjaweed were initially recruited by the military to fight Darfur insurgents, who were rebelling against power concentrated in the north. The militia later were reorganised into the RSF as an official force.

The military and the RSF were briefly allied in ruling Sudan following popular protests that ousted longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. They had a falling out in 2023 in a struggle for power.

AP

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