🔗 Share this article

According to the United Nations refugee organization, in excess of 60,000 individuals have escaped the Sudanese city of el-Fasher, which was captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces during the weekend.

Accounts suggest summary killings and human rights violations as RSF fighters entered the city after an 18-month siege featuring starvation and intense shelling.

The movement of those escaping the violence towards the town of Tawila, approximately 80km (50 miles) west of el-Fasher, had accelerated in the past few days, per UNHCR representative.

Refugees were telling terrible stories of violence, such as sexual violence, and the humanitarian group was having trouble to secure adequate accommodation and nourishment for them.

Every child was experiencing undernourishment, she commented.

Estimates suggest that more than 150,000 residents are presently unable to leave in el-Fasher, which had been the army's last stronghold in the western part of Darfur.

The Rapid Support Forces has rejected widespread accusations that the killings in el-Fasher are ethnically motivated and resemble a pattern of the Arab militia groups focusing on non-Arab populations.

Nevertheless the paramilitary group has detained one of its members, Abu Lulu, who has been charged with extrajudicial killings.

The organization distributed video revealing the member's detention after verification that he was behind the execution of several civilians in the vicinity of el-Fasher.

Video sharing service has verified that it has suspended the profile linked to Lulu. It is not clear whether he had managed the profile in his name.

Sudan was plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a vicious contest for control erupted between its army and the Rapid Support Forces.

The conflict has resulted in a food crisis and accusations of mass killing in the western Darfur region.

Over 150,000 individuals have been killed in the war across the country, and approximately 12 million have fled their homes in what the UN has called the world's largest humanitarian emergency.

The takeover of el-Fasher solidifies the regional separation in the country, with the RSF now in command of the western region and significant areas of adjacent Kordofan to the southern area, and the military occupying the capital, Khartoum, the center and east along the coastal region.

The competing factions had been collaborators - gaining control together in a seizure of power in 2021 - but split over an internationally backed plan to transition to democratic governance.