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The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been serving as a medical volunteer for the past three years in the El Fasher South medical facility after the city fell seized last Sunday by RSF paramilitaries. She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman who needed a blood transfusion, when the attack began.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel along with civilians in their beds – including some women,” she states. “I am unaware of the fate to my other patients. I had to run after they raided the medical facility.”

Khalil, aged 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and her thigh as RSF fighters took control of the nearby military headquarters. She fled the city and traveled on foot for one day, hurt and lacking sustenance, to get to the settlement of Garney. “On the way, they took my phone and money,” she explains. “I was left with nothing.”

Over a thousand individuals – featuring females and minors – traveled on foot for two days to arrive at Tawila town in North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which was seized after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

The town of Tawila, about 34 miles (55km) west from El Fasher, is under the control of the Sudan Liberation Army faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

Last Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – blamed the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. The UN reported that footage existed showing “dozens of unarmed men who were shot or found dead, with RSF militiamen around them.”

Background Context

Hostilities commenced in Sudan's capital on 15 April 2023 when an intensifying power struggle between the two main factions of the armed forces leadership ultimately became violent.

On one side are the Sudanese armed forces, that stay mostly faithful to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the nation's actual leader. Against him stand the paramilitary forces of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a gathering of armed factions who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces were first created by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab counterinsurgency militia called the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with widespread atrocities. Back in 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the Rapid Support Forces, using them to quell a fresh rebellion within South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”, according to UN officials. It has generated the world’s worst displacement crisis, dispersing over 10 million individuals internally plus 4 million who escaped to adjacent nations, putting mounting pressure on Chad and South Sudan.

Current Situation Updates

Based on eyewitness accounts, numerous more non-combatants stay confined by RSF forces and allied militias within Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Several are previous army members belonging to the Sudanese military, the Joint Forces and other militant organizations that had been fighting alongside the army. They are reportedly being held since they cannot pay ransom demands of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), based on survivor accounts who made it to Tawila. Individuals incapable of paying have been held for multiple days, and in some cases let go solely after falling seriously ill.

Reports suggest the SLA-AW has authorized military personnel escaping El Fasher to enter Tawila provided they give up their weapons.

Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a driver from Sennar in central Sudan, barely avoided execution subsequent to his seizure by three armed men mounted on camels close to Garney.

“They planned to decapitate me using a knife,” he tells, showing his arm, which one militant assaulted using an AK-47 rifle butt. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother was my colleague – and begged them not to kill me. We were 18 people who exited El Fasher as a group, however just eight arrived in Tawila. I believe the remainder perished.”

Yagoub says he observed 22 corpses in proximity to what he termed a deceptive well employed by the RSF and allied militias between Garney and Tawila. “It represents a trap,” he says. “Persons journey daily without hydration, and upon arriving there, the militias are waiting. They murdered 22 males at that location and carried the bodies off to hide them.”

Another nurse who escaped El Fasher South hospital subsequent to Sunday's offensive said RSF fighters entered using one doorway and opened fire on patients in the ER section, killing at least eight. “We escaped through a different gate, but they hit me on the head with a rifle,” he says.

Via a recorded message last Wednesday, the RSF commander, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or officer who had “violated the right of any civilian would be punished.

Many of those who escaped El Fasher utilized hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before fleeing west under cover of darkness. Already displaced families originating from the urban Abu Shouk settlement were forced to move again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before eventually heading for Tawila.

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