28 survivors have been giving Amnesty International graphic details about the killings they witnessed and the beatings, rape and sexual assault they had experienced when Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized El Fasher last month.
Amnesty in a report seen by APA on Tuesday recounts testimonies accusing RSF fighters of being responsible for attacks on civilians and the United Arab Emirates’ support for the group and therefore facilitating the violence.
Survivors who escaped El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur State have detailed to Amnesty International how RSF fighters summarily executed scores of unarmed men and raped dozens of women and girls as they captured the city.
Amnesty International researchers interviewed survivors who described witnessing groups of men shot or beaten, and taken hostages for ransom. Female survivors described how they were subjected to sexual violence by RSF fighters, as were some of their daughters. Many interviewees described seeing hundreds of dead bodies left lying in El Fasher’s streets and on the main roads out of the city.
The harrowing testimonies are some of the first from eyewitnesses who fled El Fasher after the fall of the city.
Amnesty International interviewed the survivors who managed to reach safety in the towns of Tawila, to the west of El Fasher, and Tina, on the border with Chad, after fleeing as the RSF surrounded and then entered El Fasher on 26 October.
Three interviews were conducted in-person in Chad, and the rest remotely by mobile devices.
“The world must not look away as more details emerge about the RSF’s brutal attack on El Fasher. The survivors we interviewed told of the unimaginable horrors they faced as they escaped the city,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“In the coming weeks, more evidence will emerge of the violence committed by RSF fighters in El Fasher. This persistent, widespread violence against civilians constitutes war crimes and may also constitute other crimes under international law. All those responsible must be held accountable for their actions” she said.
According to Callamard the atrocities were facilitated by the UAE’s support for the RSF which ”is fuelling the relentless cycle of violence against civilians in Sudan”.
the Amnesty boss called on the international community and the UN Security Council to demand that the UAE disengages from supporting the RSF.
The UN Security Council, which had referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court has been urged to extend this referral to the rest of Sudan where civil war which began in April 2023 has led to the death of thousands of people mostly civilians and displaced over two million in and out of the country.
“Killing people as if they were flies”
According to findings from Amnesty International, on 26 October, the day El Fasher fell, an estimated 260,000 civilians were still trapped in the city. from where Ahmed, 21, attempted to escape with his wife, two young children and his older brother by following a group of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers who had abandoned their posts.
After his wife was killed by shrapnel from a nearby explosion and he became separated from his children, Ahmed was forced to continue moving north with his brother. Along the way they picked up two girls, aged three and four, whose parents had apparently been killed. When the group reached Golo, on the outskirts of the city, together with three other men and an older woman, they were ambushed by RSF fighters.
Ahmed said: “They asked us, ‘Are you soldiers, or are you civilians?’, and we told them we are civilians. They said, ‘In El Fasher, there are no civilians, everybody is a soldier’.” The RSF fighters then ordered his brother and the other three men to lie down. He said: “When they lied down, they executed them.”
The fighters let Ahmed, the two young girls and the older woman go, for reasons that remain unclear to them. Three days later, Ahmed reached Tawila, approximately 60km away, with the two girls. However, the older woman died on the journey, likely from dehydration.
Daoud, 19 was another survivor who fled El Fasher with seven neighbourhood friends. He said they all were killed after RSF fighters captured them at the berm that surrounded the city: “They shot at us from all directions… I watched my friends die in front of me” he explained.
Khalil, 34, escaped El Fasher on 27 October. He described how after initially managing to get past the berm, he and approximately 20 others were soon caught by RSF fighters in cars: “The RSF fighters… asked us to lie down on the ground… Two RSF fighters opened fire on us… They killed 17 of the 20 men I was fleeing with.”
Khalil said he only survived after pretending to be dead: “The RSF were killing people as if they were flies. It was a massacre. None of the people killed that I have seen were armed soldiers.”
“They were enjoying it, they were laughing”
Badr, 26, had remained in El Fasher until 26 October with his uncle, who had been recovering in the Saudi Hospital from a gunshot wound to the leg. On 27 October, he organised a donkey cart to transport his uncle, two other older patients and their relatives out of the city at around 1am. When they reached the village of Shagara, approximately 20km west of El Fasher, they were encircled by RSF vehicles.
Badr told Amnesty International that RSF fighters bound their hands and told the younger, uninjured men to get into the back of their pickup truck. They demanded that the three older men, all aged over 50 and suffering from serious injuries, also get in.
Badr said: “They could see that these people are elderly, that they will need to be picked up and put in the pickup… They thought that they were wasting their time… One of them who had an automatic machine gun, he got down [from the truck] and… opened fire. He killed them, and then he killed the donkeys… They were enjoying it, they were laughing.”
Badr was then blindfolded and taken along with five other remaining captives to a nearby village. After three days they were moved to another location about a four-hour drive away. Badr was allowed to call his relatives, and the RSF demanded they pay more than 20 million Sudanese pounds (approximately $8,880 USD) for his release.
Whilst captive, Badr said he’d witnessed an RSF soldier filming the execution of one man during a call with relatives. The man was one of three detained brothers whose family had not yet paid a ransom for their release. Badr said: “They shot one in the head on camera, and told them [his relatives]: ‘Look, if you don’t send the money as soon as possible, the other two will be killed and you won’t even be told that they have been killed’.”
Sexual violence against women and girls
Ibtisam left the Abu Shouk neighbourhood of El Fasher with her five children on the morning of 27 October. Along with a group of neighbours, they headed west towards Golo, where they were stopped by three RSF fighters.
Ibtisam said: “One of them forced me to go with them, cut my Jalabiya [a traditional robe], and raped me. When they left, my 14-year-old daughter came to me. I found that her clothes had blood and were cut into pieces. Her hair at the back of her head was full of dust.”
Ibtisam told Amnesty International that her daughter remained silent for the next few hours until she saw her mother crying: “She came to me and said, ‘Mum, they raped me too, but do not tell anyone.’ After the rape, my daughter really became sick… When we reached Tawila, her health deteriorated, and she died at the clinic.”
WN/as/APA