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Nawal Khalil had been serving as a medical volunteer over a three-year period within the South El Fasher hospital when the city was taken over on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was occupied with patient care, featuring one senior woman who needed a blood transfusion, when the attack began.

“They killed six wounded soldiers and civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she recounts. “I am unaware of the fate for my remaining patients. I was forced to flee as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, was shot in the right foot and thigh while RSF combatants gained control of the adjacent military command center. She escaped from the city and journeyed by foot for 24 hours, hurt and lacking sustenance, to reach the town of Garney. “On the way, they took my phone and cash,” she explains. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

Over a thousand individuals – comprising women and children – journeyed by walking for 48 hours to reach the town of Tawila located in northern Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which fell under control after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

Tawila, around 55 kilometers to the west from El Fasher, remains under the authority of the SLA-AW group led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

On Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – accused the RSF for slaughtering in excess of 2,000 non-combatants after the city's capture. The UN reported that visual evidence showed featuring numerous unarmed males being shot or lying dead, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Background Context

Fighting broke out in Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 as an escalating power struggle among the two primary factions of the military regime finally turned deadly.

On one side stand the Sudanese military forces, which maintain general loyalty to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Challenging him stand the paramilitary forces of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militias who follow the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The RSF was originally established by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir himself as a pro-Arab counterinsurgency force known as the Janjaweed, which soon became linked with massive human rights violations. In 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the Rapid Support Forces, using them to quell a new uprising in South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into among the most severe humanitarian crises in modern times, based on UN statements. It has generated the globe's most severe displacement emergency, forcing more than 10 million persons internally along with 4 million refugees to bordering states, creating increasing strain upon Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

Based on eyewitness accounts, many additional civilians stay confined by RSF forces and allied militias within Garney, southwest from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the allied Joint Forces plus additional armed factions which had been combatting together with the army. They are reportedly being held since they cannot pay extortion payments of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), based on survivor accounts who arrived in Tawila. People who cannot afford payment have been held for multiple days, and occasionally released only after becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has reportedly allowed army soldiers running from El Fasher to access Tawila provided they give up their weapons.

The individual Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a motorist originating from Sennar from central Sudanese regions, narrowly escaped being killed subsequent to his seizure by three armed men mounted on camels in the Garney vicinity.

“They intended to behead me using a knife,” he informs, displaying his arm, which one of the fighters hit with the butt of an AK-47 rifle. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and pleaded with them to spare me. Our group contained 18 individuals who left El Fasher together, however just eight arrived in Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub reports he observed 22 corpses close to what he described as a fraudulent water source utilized by RSF forces and associated militias between Garney and Tawila. “It represents a trap,” he comments. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They murdered 22 males at that location and took the bodies away to hide them.”

A different medical worker who ran from South El Fasher hospital following Sunday's assault said RSF fighters entered through one gate and began shooting at patients in the emergency ward, causing at least eight fatalities. “We escaped through a different gate, yet they assaulted my head with a firearm,” he recounts.

In a video statement this past Wednesday, the head of the RSF, General Dagalo, called Hemedti, declared that any fighter or official who breached the rights of any person” would be held accountable.

Numerous individuals who fled El Fasher utilized hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before fleeing west under cover of darkness. Already displaced families from Abu Shouk camp in the city were forced to move again, finding shelter in Daraja Oula area before eventually heading for Tawila.

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