- 28 survivors tell of killings, beatings, rape and sexual assault
- RSF fighters responsible for attacks on civilians must be held accountable
- United Arab Emirates’ support for the RSF responsible for facilitating violence
Survivors who escaped El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur State have detailed to Amnesty International how fighters with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) executed scores of unarmed men and raped dozens of women and girls as they captured the city.
Amnesty International researchers interviewed survivors who described witnessing groups of men shot or beaten, and taken hostages for ransom. Female survivors described how they were subjected to sexual violence by RSF fighters, as were some of their daughters. Many interviewees described seeing hundreds of dead bodies left lying in El Fasher’s streets and on the main roads out of the city.
The harrowing testimonies are some of the first from eyewitnesses who fled El Fasher after the fall of the city. Amnesty International interviewed 28 survivors who managed to reach safety in the towns of Tawila, to the west of El Fasher, and Tina, on the border with Chad, after fleeing as the RSF surrounded and then entered El Fasher on 26 October. Three interviews were conducted in-person in Chad, and the rest remotely by mobile devices.
“The world must not look away as more details emerge about the RSF’s brutal attack on El Fasher. The survivors we interviewed told of the unimaginable horrors they faced as they escaped the city,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
This persistent, widespread violence against civilians constitutes war crimes and may also constitute other crimes under international law
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General
“In the coming weeks, more evidence will emerge of the violence committed by RSF fighters in El Fasher. This persistent, widespread violence against civilians constitutes war crimes and may also constitute other crimes under international law. All those responsible must be held accountable for their actions.
“These atrocities were facilitated by the United Arab Emirates’ support for the RSF. The UAE’s ongoing backing of the RSF is fuelling the relentless cycle of violence against civilians in Sudan. The international community and the UN Security Council must demand that the UAE disengages from supporting the RSF.
“It is imperative that the UN Human Rights Council’s Sudan Fact-Finding Mission has the resources required to meaningfully fulfil its mandate, and to investigate violations and abuses in Sudan, including those taking place in El Fasher. The UN Security Council, which had referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, must now imperatively extend the referral to the rest of Sudan.
“Amnesty International also urges all external actors to take necessary measures to end the sale or supply of arms and related materials to all parties to the conflict, as per the arms embargo established by the UN Security Council; an embargo which must be extended to the whole country.”
Amnesty International is also calling on the international and regional actors – including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the UN Security Council, the EU and its member states, the African Union, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the United Kingdom, United States, Russia, China – to put urgent diplomatic pressure on the RSF leadership to end their attacks on civilians including sexual violence against women and girls.
“As the conflict continues, the survivors’ stories provide further proof of the failure of the international community in Sudan. It must step up efforts to ensure accountability, protect those at risk, and demand that all states that are either directly backing or enabling the RSF change course immediately,” said Agnès Callamard.
“The RSF were killing people as if they were flies”
On 26 October, the day El Fasher fell, an estimated 260,000 civilians were still trapped in the city. Ahmed*, 21, attempted to escape with his wife, two young children and his older brother by following a group of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers who had abandoned their posts.
After his wife was killed by shrapnel from a nearby explosion and he became separated from his children, Ahmed* was forced to continue moving north with his brother. Along the way they picked up two girls, aged three and four, whose parents had apparently been killed. When the group reached Golo, on the outskirts of the city, together with three other men and an older woman, they were ambushed by RSF fighters.
Ahmed* said: “They asked us, ‘Are you soldiers, or are you civilians?’, and we told them we are civilians. They said, ‘In El Fasher, there are no civilians, everybody is a soldier’.” The RSF fighters then ordered his brother and the other three men to lie down. He said: “When they lied down, they executed them.”
The fighters let Ahmed*, the two young girls and the older woman go, for reasons that remain unclear to them. Three days later, Ahmed* reached Tawila, approximately 60km away, with the two girls. However, the older woman died on the journey, likely from dehydration.
Daoud*, 19, fled El Fasher with seven neighbourhood friends. He said they all were killed after RSF fighters captured them at the berm that surrounded the city: “They shot at us from all directions… I watched my friends die in front of me.”
Khalil*, 34, escaped El Fasher on 27 October. He described how after initially managing to get past the berm, he and approximately 20 others were soon caught by RSF fighters in cars: “The RSF fighters… asked us to lie down on the ground… Two RSF fighters opened fire on us… They killed 17 of the 20 men I was fleeing with.”
Khalil* said he only survived after pretending to be dead: “The RSF were killing people as if they were flies. It was a massacre. None of the people killed that I have seen were armed soldiers.”
“They were enjoying it, they were laughing”
Badr*, 26, had remained in El Fasher until 26 October with his uncle, who had been recovering in the Saudi Hospital from a gunshot wound to the leg. On 27 October, he organized a donkey cart to transport his uncle, two other older patients and their relatives out of the city at around 1am. When they reached the village of Shagara, approximately 20km west of El Fasher, they were encircled by RSF vehicles.
Badr* told Amnesty International that RSF fighters bound their hands and told the younger, uninjured men to get into the back of their pickup truck. They demanded that the three older men, all aged over 50 and suffering from serious injuries, also get in.
Badr* said: “They could see that these people are elderly, that they will need to be picked up and put in the pickup… They thought that they were wasting their time… One of them who had an automatic machine gun, he got down [from the truck] and… opened fire. He killed them, and then he killed the donkeys… They were enjoying it, they were laughing.”
Badr* was then blindfolded and taken along with five other remaining captives to a nearby village. After three days they were moved to another location about a four-hour drive away. Badr* was allowed to call his relatives, and the RSF demanded they pay more than 20 million Sudanese pounds (approximately $8,880 USD) for his release.
Whilst captive, Badr* witnessed an RSF soldier filming the execution of one man during a call with relatives. The man was one of three detained brothers whose family had not yet paid a ransom for their release. Badr* said: “They shot one in the head on camera, and told them [his relatives]: ‘Look, if you don’t send the money as soon as possible, the other two will be killed and you won’t even be told that they have been killed’.”
Sexual violence against women and girls
Ibtisam* left the Abu Shouk neighbourhood of El Fasher with her five children on the morning of 27 October. Along with a group of neighbours, they headed west towards Golo, where they were stopped by three RSF fighters.
Ibtisam* said: “One of them forced me to go with them, cut my Jalabiya [a traditional robe], and raped me. When they left, my 14-year-old daughter came to me. I found that her clothes had blood and were cut into pieces. Her hair at the back of her head was full of dust.”
Ibtisam* told Amnesty International that her daughter remained silent for the next few hours until she saw her mother crying: “She came to me and said, ‘Mum, they raped me too, but do not tell anyone.’ After the rape, my daughter really became sick… When we reached Tawila, her health deteriorated, and she died at the clinic.”
She came to me and said, ‘Mum, they raped me too, but do not tell anyone’
Ibtisam*, a survivor who escaped El Fasher
Khaltoum*, 29, attempted to escape El Fasher in the afternoon of 26 October with her 12-year-old daughter. Together with more than 150 others, they reached the “Babul Amal” gate on the western side of the city. They were stopped by RSF fighters who separated the men from the women, and killed five men.
Khaltoum* was then taken with her daughter and around 20 other women to Zamzam internally displaced camp – more than 10km away – on foot. There, RSF fighters separated the younger women and told them to queue to be searched.
Khaltoum* told Amnesty International: “They selected about eleven of us… I was taken to a Rakuba [makeshift shelter], and an armed RSF fighter and another who was not armed accompanied me. They searched me and then the unarmed man raped me while the other one watched. He kept me there the whole day. He raped me three times. My daughter was not raped, but the other 10 women they selected for the search were all raped.”
Background
The ongoing conflict between the RSF and the SAF in Sudan began in April 2023. It has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over 12 million, making it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Amnesty International has documented war crimes by the RSF and allied Arab militias where they jointly carried out ethnically targeted attacks against the Masalit and other non-Arab communities in West Darfur. The organization has also documented widespread sexual violence by the RSF across the country that amounted to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
Amnesty International has also previously documented how the conflict in Sudan is being fuelled by a constant flow of weapons into the country, in flagrant breach of the existing arms embargo on Darfur, with the UAE in particular supplying weapons and ammunition to the RSF.
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