Al-Fasher after take-over by Dagalo's RSF is a ghost city where hundreds were killed

 

Dit beeld staat voor de verschrikkingen in Darfour

Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people at a hospital, including patients, after they seized the provincial capital of North Darfur over the weekend, according to the U.N., displaced residents and aid workers, who described harrowing details of the atrocities.

The 460 patients and their companions were reportedly killed Tuesday at Saudi Hospital by fighters from the Rapid Support Forces in the city of el-Fasher, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization.

As part of their assault on el-Fasher, RSF fighters also went from house to house, beating and shooting at people, including women and children, witnesses told The Associated Press. Many died of gunshot wounds in the streets, some while trying to flee to safety, witnesses said.

The AP spoke with Amena and four others who managed to flee el-Fasher and arrived exhausted and dehydrated early Tuesday in the nearby town of Tawila, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of el-Fasher, which already hosts over 650,000 displaced. The U.N. migration agency said more than 36,000 people have fled el-Fasher, mostly to rural areas around it, since Sunday.

Two years of fighting for control of Sudan has killed over 40,000 people — a figure rights groups consider a significant undercount — and has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with over 14 million displaced. The capture of el-Fasher by the powerful Arab-led force raises fears that Africa’s third-largest nation may split again, nearly 15 years after oil-rich South Sudan gained independence following years of civil war.

Sudanese residents and aid workers revealed harrowing details of atrocities by the RSF after it seized the army’s last stronghold in Darfur following more than 500 days of siege. Fighters from the RSF “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards,” according to the Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group tracking the war. RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo acknowledged what he called “abuses” by his forces. In his first comments since the fall of el-Fasher, posted Wednesday on the Telegram messaging app, he said an investigation was opened. He did not elaborate.

Mini Minawi, the governor of Darfur, shared a video online that purported to show RSF fighters inside the Saudi Hospital. The minute-long footage shows bodies lying on the floor in pools of blood. Other bodies could be seen outside. The AP could not independently verify the date, location or condition under which the video was recorded.

In a report late Tuesday, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said that RSF fighters continued to carry out mass killings since they took over el-Fasher.

The report, which relied on satellite imagery from Airbus, said it corroborated alleged executions and mass killing by the RSF around the Saudi Hospital, and at a detention center at the former Children’s Hospital in the eastern part of the city. The AP accessed and analyzed the same imagery, seeing objects and red stains on the ground at the sites that the lab identified as blood and bodies.

The lab also said that “systematic killings” took place in the vicinity of the eastern wall, which the RSF built outside the city earlier this year.

Sheldon Yett, the UNICEF representative to Sudan, said in an interview that the situation in el-Fasher, was “an absolute catastrophe,” with thousands of children already suffering from disease and famine before the takeover of the city by the RSF.

Aid groups said a death toll has been difficult to determine since RSF overran el-Fasher, given a near communication blackout.The report from Yale said satellite imagery can’t show the true scale of the mass killings, and that an estimated death toll is likely an undercount. Before the latest bout of violence, some 1,850 civilians were killed in North Darfur, including 1,350 in el-Fasher, between Jan. 1 and Oct. 20 this year, according to U.N. spokesperson Farhan Aziz Haq.