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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 seized last Sunday by the RSF fighters. She was busy treating patients, among them an older female patient who needed a blood transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“Six injured soldiers were killed plus civilian patients in their beds – some of them women,” she says. “The outcome remains unknown to my other patients. I needed to escape as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and thigh as RSF fighters took control of the adjacent military command center. She escaped from the city and walked for a day, wounded and without nourishment, to get to the settlement of Garney. “During the journey, they seized my mobile and money,” she says. “I ended up with nothing.”

Over a thousand individuals – comprising women and children – traveled on foot for two days to get to the settlement of Tawila in North Darfur following their escape from El Fasher, which was captured after an 18-month siege.

The town of Tawila, approximately 34 miles westward away from El Fasher, remains under the authority of the Sudan Liberation Army faction led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

On Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – which partner with Sudan's military – blamed the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians following the urban center's takeover. United Nations officials stated that visual evidence showed showing “dozens of unarmed men who were shot or found dead, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Historical Background

Fighting broke out within Khartoum during April of 2023 as an escalating power struggle involving the two key groups of the armed forces leadership ultimately became violent.

From one perspective exist the official Sudanese army, who remain broadly loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto head of state. Against him exist the irregular troops of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militias who follow the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab counterinsurgency militia called the Janjaweed, which quickly became synonymous with massive human rights violations. In 2013, Bashir converted the organization into the Rapid Support Forces, sending them to suppress a new uprising in South Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in contemporary history, as per UN representatives. It has produced the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, forcing more than 10 million persons inside the nation plus 4 million who escaped into neighbouring countries, generating growing stress on both Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

Per observer reports, thousands more civilians stay confined by RSF forces and partner militias in the Garney area, southwest from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the Joint Forces and other militant organizations that were previously aligned with the military. They are apparently detained as they lack funds for extortion payments between five and ten million Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), according to survivors who reached Tawila. People who cannot afford payment remain imprisoned for several days, and sometimes freed only when becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted military personnel escaping El Fasher to enter Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

Adam Yagoub, aged 28, a motorist originating from Sennar in central Sudan, barely avoided execution subsequent to his seizure by three militiamen on camels near Garney.

“They planned to decapitate me using a knife,” he informs, exhibiting his limb, which one militant assaulted with the stock of a Kalashnikov. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and begged them not to kill me. There were 18 of us who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I believe the remainder perished.”

Yagoub reports he saw 22 bodies near what he called a “fake well” employed by the RSF and associated militias along the Garney-Tawila route. “It’s a trap,” he says. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and when they reach it, the armed groups lie in wait. They killed 22 men there and carried the bodies off to conceal them.”

A different medical worker who escaped El Fasher South hospital subsequent to Sunday's offensive stated RSF combatants came in via one entrance and commenced firing upon patients in the emergency ward, murdering no less than eight. “We escaped through a different gate, but they hit me on the head using a rifle,” he states.

Through a video declaration on Wednesday, the head of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or commander who infringed upon the rights of any person” would be held accountable.

Many of those who escaped El Fasher utilized hours hiding near the army’s artillery unit before fleeing west during nighttime. Previously displaced households originating from the urban Abu Shouk settlement were compelled to relocate again, taking asylum in the Daraja Oula district before eventually heading for Tawila.

Individuals seized by the RSF in Garney were apparently provided {water mixed with flour|flour