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The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been working as a healthcare worker for the past three years within the South El Fasher hospital as the city became taken over on Sunday by the RSF fighters. She was busy treating patients, including an elderly woman who needed a blood transfusion, as the assault commenced.

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

Khalil, 27, was shot in the right foot and upper leg while RSF combatants gained control of the nearby military headquarters. She fled the city and traveled on foot for one day, injured and without food, to get to the settlement of Garney. “On the way, they confiscated my phone and money,” she describes. “I was left with nothing.”

More than 1,000 people – including women and children – walked for two days to arrive at Tawila town in North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which was captured following an 18-month blockade.

This settlement, about 34 miles (55km) west away from El Fasher, is governed by of the Sudan Liberation Army faction led by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur (SLA-AW).

This past Tuesday, the allied Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – charged the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. United Nations officials stated there were videos showing “dozens of unarmed men either being shot or deceased, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Contextual Information

Fighting broke out within Khartoum during April of 2023 as a growing contest for power between the two main factions of the military regime eventually resulted in fatalities.

On one side are the Sudanese armed forces, which maintain general loyalty towards General al-Burhan, the de facto head of state. Opposing him stand the paramilitary forces of the RSF paramilitary group, a collection of militias that obey the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces were first created by the former dictatorial ruler Bashir's regime as an Arab counterinsurgency militia known as the Janjaweed, that rapidly became associated with massive human rights violations. In 2013, Bashir reformed the faction into the RSF, sending them to suppress a new uprising within South Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into a terrible humanitarian disaster in contemporary history, based on UN statements. It has created the globe's most severe displacement emergency, scattering more than 10 million people within the country and 4 million who have fled into neighbouring countries, creating increasing strain upon Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

Based on eyewitness accounts, numerous more non-combatants remain trapped by the RSF and allied militias within Garney, in the southwestern direction from El Fasher. Numerous are ex-military personnel belonging to the Sudanese military, the collaborative forces plus additional armed factions which had been combatting together with the army. They are apparently detained because they cannot afford extortion payments between five and ten million Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), according to survivors who reached Tawila. People who cannot afford payment remain imprisoned for several days, and sometimes released only after becoming gravely ill.

Reports suggest the SLA-AW has authorized government troops fleeing El Fasher to enter Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

The individual Adam Yagoub, aged 28, a motorist originating from Sennar in central Sudan, narrowly escaped being killed following his capture by three armed men mounted on camels near Garney.

“They planned to decapitate me with a knife,” he recounts, exhibiting his limb, which one militant assaulted with the stock of a Kalashnikov. “Subsequently one identified me – his brother was my colleague – and pleaded with them to spare me. We were 18 people who left El Fasher together, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub says he witnessed 22 deceased individuals close to what he described as a fraudulent water source used by the RSF and allied militias between Garney and Tawila. “This is an ambush,” he explains. “People walk all day without water, and when they get to it, the militias are waiting. They murdered 22 males at that location and removed the corpses to hide them.”

A different medical worker who ran from South El Fasher hospital following Sunday's assault reported RSF militiamen penetrated through one gate and opened fire on patients within the emergency department, murdering no less than eight. “We escaped through a different gate, however they struck my head using a rifle,” he recounts.

Through a video declaration last Wednesday, the head of the RSF, General Dagalo, known as Hemedti, said that any soldier or officer who had “violated the right of any individual would face consequences.

Many of those who escaped El Fasher utilized hours concealing themselves near military artillery prior to escaping westward during nighttime. Already displaced families from the city’s Abu Shouk camp were compelled to relocate again, finding shelter in Daraja Oula area before eventually heading for Tawila.

People apprehended by RSF forces in Garney were apparently provided {water mixed with flour|flour