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The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a nurse over a three-year period within the South El Fasher hospital after the city fell seized last Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman in need of a transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel and civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she states. “The outcome remains unknown for my remaining patients. I needed to escape after they raided the medical facility.”

Khalil, 27, was shot in the right foot and upper leg during the RSF's seizure of the closeby army headquarters. She escaped from the city 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 – including women and children – journeyed by walking for 48 hours to reach the town of Tawila in North Darfur following their escape from El Fasher, which was captured following an 18-month blockade.

Tawila, around 55 kilometers to the west away from El Fasher, remains under the authority of the Sudan Liberation Army faction commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

Last Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – charged the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians following the urban center's takeover. The UN said that footage existed depicting dozens of weaponless men who were shot or found dead, surrounded by RSF fighters.”

Contextual Information

Fighting broke out within Khartoum during April of 2023 when an intensifying power struggle among the two primary factions within the military government ultimately became violent.

Among the combatants stand the Sudanese military forces, which maintain general loyalty towards General al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him exist the irregular troops belonging to the RSF, an assembly of militia groups who follow the former warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia known as the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with widespread atrocities. During 2013, Bashir transformed the group to become the RSF, sending them to suppress a fresh rebellion within South Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into among the most severe humanitarian crises in modern times, as per UN representatives. It has generated the globe's most severe displacement emergency, dispersing over 10 million individuals inside the nation along with 4 million refugees to bordering states, generating growing stress on Chad and South Sudan.

Ongoing Developments

Per observer reports, many additional civilians continue to be held by the RSF and associated armed groups in the Garney area, southwest from El Fasher. Numerous are ex-military personnel from the Sudanese army, the Joint Forces and other armed groups which had been combatting together with the army. Reports indicate they're imprisoned since they cannot pay extortion payments between five and ten million Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), based on survivor accounts who reached Tawila. Those unable to pay have been detained for days, and occasionally released only after becoming gravely ill.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted government troops fleeing El Fasher to access Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

The individual Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a motorist originating from Sennar within central Sudan, narrowly escaped being killed subsequent to his seizure by three armed men mounted on camels near Garney.

“They planned to decapitate me with a knife,” he recounts, displaying his arm, which one militant assaulted with the stock of a Kalashnikov. “Then one of them recognised me – his sibling had collaborated with me – and urged them not to execute me. We were 18 people who departed El Fasher collectively, but only eight made it to Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub reports he observed 22 corpses in proximity to what he termed a fraudulent water source used by the RSF and associated militias along the Garney-Tawila route. “It’s a trap,” he says. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and when they get to it, the militiamen await. They killed 22 men there and removed the corpses to conceal them.”

An additional nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility following Sunday's assault reported RSF militiamen penetrated using one doorway and began shooting at patients within the emergency department, killing at least eight. “We escaped through a different gate, however they struck my head with a firearm,” he says.

Through a video declaration last Wednesday, the head of the RSF, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or commander who infringed upon the rights of any civilian would be punished.

Many of those who escaped from El Fasher passed hours hiding near the army’s artillery unit prior to escaping westward under cover of darkness. Previously displaced households from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were compelled to relocate again, finding shelter in Daraja Oula area prior to ultimately traveling to Tawila.

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