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The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been working as a medical volunteer over a three-year period in the El Fasher South medical facility after the city fell taken over on Sunday by RSF paramilitaries. She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman in need of a transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“They killed six wounded soldiers along with civilians in their beds – among them female victims,” she recounts. “The outcome remains unknown for my remaining patients. I had to run when they stormed the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, received a gunshot wound to her right foot and thigh while RSF combatants gained control of the closeby army headquarters. She fled the city and journeyed by foot for 24 hours, wounded and without nourishment, to get to the settlement of Garney. “During the journey, they confiscated my phone and money,” she describes. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

Over a thousand individuals – including women and children – walked for two days to get to the settlement of Tawila within North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which fell under control after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

This settlement, approximately 34 miles westward of El Fasher, is governed by by the SLA faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

On Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – which partner with Sudan's military – blamed the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. United Nations officials stated that visual evidence showed showing “dozens of unarmed men either being shot or deceased, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Historical Background

Fighting broke out in Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions within the military government finally turned deadly.

On one side exist the official Sudanese army, that stay mostly faithful to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the nation's actual leader. Against him stand the paramilitary forces of the RSF paramilitary group, a collection of militias that obey the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The RSF was originally established by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab counterinsurgency militia named the Janjaweed, which soon became linked with massive human rights violations. During 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the RSF, sending them to suppress a new uprising in South Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into among the most severe humanitarian crises in modern times, as per UN representatives. It has created the globe's most severe displacement emergency, scattering more than 10 million people internally plus 4 million who escaped to bordering states, generating growing stress on both Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

Per observer reports, thousands more civilians continue to be held by the RSF and partner militias in Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Several are previous army members from the Sudanese army, the allied Joint Forces and other militant organizations which had been combatting together with the army. They are apparently detained as they lack funds for ransom requests ranging from 5 to 10 million 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 in some cases released only after developing critical health conditions.

The SLA-AW has reportedly allowed government troops fleeing El Fasher to come into Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a motorist originating from Sennar within central Sudan, closely avoided death following his capture by three armed men mounted on camels near Garney.

“They intended to behead me using a knife,” he tells, showing 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 urged them not to execute me. Our group contained 18 individuals who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub says he witnessed 22 deceased individuals near what he called a deceptive well employed by the RSF and partner armed groups in the area connecting Garney and Tawila. “This is an ambush,” 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 took the bodies away to conceal them.”

Another nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility after the attack on Sunday said RSF fighters entered using one doorway and commenced firing upon patients within the emergency department, killing at least eight. “We fled through another gate, yet they assaulted my head with a rifle,” he recounts.

In a video statement last Wednesday, the RSF commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti, declared that any fighter or official who breached the rights of any person” would be held accountable.

Numerous individuals who fled El Fasher spent hours taking cover close to army artillery positions before fleeing west under cover of darkness. Already displaced families from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were compelled to relocate again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before finally moving toward Tawila.

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