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A nurse named Nawal Khalil had been working as a healthcare worker for three years in the El Fasher South medical facility after the city fell taken over on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was occupied with patient care, among them an older female patient requiring a blood transfusion, when the attack began.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel along with civilians in their beds – including some women,” she recounts. “I am unaware of the fate regarding my other patients. I needed to escape as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and her thigh as RSF fighters took control of the adjacent military command center. She escaped from the city and walked for a day, injured and without food, to reach the town of Garney. “On the way, they confiscated my phone and cash,” she explains. “I was left with nothing.”

Over a thousand individuals – including women and children – traveled on foot for two days to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which was seized following an 18-month blockade.

This settlement, about 34 miles (55km) west from El Fasher, is governed by by the SLA faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

Last Tuesday, the collaborative Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – charged the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians after the city's capture. The UN said that visual evidence showed depicting dozens of weaponless men either being shot or deceased, surrounded by RSF fighters.”

Background Context

Conflict erupted in Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 as an escalating power struggle involving the two key groups within the military government finally turned deadly.

Among the combatants are the Sudanese armed forces, which maintain general loyalty to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the nation's actual leader. Challenging him stand the paramilitary forces belonging to the RSF, a gathering of armed factions who follow the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the previous authoritarian leader Bashir's regime as a pro-Arab counterinsurgency force known as the Janjaweed, which quickly became synonymous with massive human rights violations. During 2013, Bashir reformed the faction into the RSF, deploying them to crush a recent insurrection in South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into a terrible humanitarian disaster in recent history”, according to UN officials. It has created the globe's most severe displacement emergency, dispersing over 10 million individuals inside the nation plus 4 million who escaped to adjacent nations, generating growing stress upon Chad and South Sudan.

Ongoing Developments

Per observer reports, numerous more non-combatants stay confined by RSF forces and allied militias in Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the Joint Forces plus additional armed factions that were previously aligned with the military. They are apparently detained because they cannot afford ransom requests ranging from 5 to 10 million Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), based on survivor accounts who arrived in Tawila. Individuals incapable of paying have been detained for days, and occasionally freed only when becoming gravely ill.

Reports suggest the SLA-AW has authorized army soldiers running from El Fasher to enter Tawila on condition they surrender their weapons.

The individual Adam Yagoub, aged 28, a motorist originating from Sennar within central Sudan, barely avoided execution after being captured by three armed men mounted on camels close to Garney.

“They intended to behead me with a knife,” he recounts, displaying his arm, that one combatant struck with the butt of an AK-47 rifle. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and begged them not to kill me. We were 18 people who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I believe the remainder perished.”

Yagoub states he saw 22 bodies near what he called a deceptive well utilized by RSF forces and associated militias between Garney and Tawila. “It represents a trap,” he says. “People walk all day without water, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They killed 22 men there and carried the bodies off to conceal them.”

A different medical worker who escaped El Fasher South hospital following Sunday's assault stated RSF combatants came in using one doorway and began shooting at patients within the emergency department, killing at least eight. “We fled through another gate, however they struck my head using a rifle,” he states.

Through a video declaration last Wednesday, the head of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti, declared that any fighter or officer who had “violated the right of any civilian would be punished.

Many of those who escaped El Fasher spent hours concealing themselves near military artillery prior to escaping westward during nighttime. Families already uprooted from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were compelled to relocate again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood prior to ultimately traveling to Tawila.

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