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A nurse named Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a healthcare worker for the past three years at El Fasher South hospital after the city fell captured on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was busy treating patients, among them an older female patient requiring a blood transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“They killed six wounded soldiers along with civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she says. “I am unaware of the fate for my remaining patients. I was forced to flee as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, 27, was hit by a bullet in her right foot and thigh during the RSF's seizure of the adjacent military command center. She ran from the urban area and journeyed by foot for 24 hours, wounded and without nourishment, to get to the settlement of Garney. “On the way, they took my phone and money,” she says. “I possessed nothing remaining.”

In excess of 1,000 persons – featuring females and minors – walked for two days to arrive at Tawila town within North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which was seized after an 18-month siege.

This settlement, approximately 34 miles westward from El Fasher, is governed by by the SLA faction led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

Last Tuesday, the collaborative Joint Forces – which partner with Sudan's military – charged the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians following the urban center's takeover. United Nations officials stated that footage existed showing “dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Contextual Information

Fighting broke out within Khartoum during April of 2023 when an intensifying power struggle between the two main factions within the military government finally turned deadly.

Among the combatants stand the Sudanese military forces, who remain broadly loyal towards General al-Burhan, the nation's actual leader. Challenging him are the paramilitaries of the RSF paramilitary group, a collection of militias who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab anti-rebellion militia called the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with widespread atrocities. During 2013, Bashir converted the organization into the Rapid Support Forces, deploying them to crush a new uprising within South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into among the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history”, as per UN representatives. It has produced the globe's most severe displacement emergency, scattering more than 10 million people within the country along with 4 million refugees into neighbouring countries, putting mounting pressure on both Chad and South Sudan.

Ongoing Developments

Per observer reports, thousands more civilians continue to be held by the RSF and allied militias in Garney, south-west of El Fasher. Many are former soldiers from the Sudanese army, the allied Joint Forces and other militant organizations which had been combatting together with the army. They are reportedly being held since they cannot pay ransom requests ranging from 5 to 10 million Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), according to survivors who arrived in Tawila. People who cannot afford payment have been held for multiple days, and occasionally freed only when becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted military personnel escaping El Fasher to come into Tawila provided they give up their weapons.

The individual Adam Yagoub, 28, a driver from Sennar from central Sudanese regions, barely avoided execution after being captured by three armed men mounted on camels near Garney.

“They wanted to cut my head off with a knife,” he informs, exhibiting his limb, that one combatant struck using an AK-47 rifle butt. “Then one of them recognised me – his sibling had collaborated with me – and urged them not to execute me. We were 18 people who exited El Fasher as a group, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub says he saw 22 bodies close to what he described as a fraudulent water source employed by the RSF and associated militias along the Garney-Tawila route. “It represents a trap,” he says. “Persons journey daily without hydration, and when they reach it, the militiamen await. They slaughtered 22 men on that spot and removed the corpses to conceal them.”

An additional nurse who escaped El Fasher South hospital after the attack on Sunday said RSF fighters entered using one doorway and commenced firing upon patients in the ER section, killing at least eight. “We ran out via another entrance, yet they assaulted my head using a rifle,” he states.

Via a recorded message on Wednesday, the leader of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or official who breached the rights of any civilian would be punished.

Several people who got away from El Fasher passed hours taking cover close to army artillery positions prior to escaping westward under darkness's protection. Families already uprooted from Abu Shouk camp in the city were forced to move again, taking asylum in the Daraja Oula district before finally moving toward Tawila.

Individuals seized by the RSF within Garney reportedly received {water mixed with flour|flour