In excess of 60,000 Flee Sudanese City After Takeover by Rapid Support Forces Paramilitary Group, United Nations Says
According to the UNHCR, over 60,000 civilians have escaped the Sudanese city of el-Fasher, which was captured by the paramilitary RSF over the weekend.
Accounts suggest mass executions and crimes against humanity as RSF fighters entered the city after an year-and-a-half encirclement featuring starvation and intense shelling.
The flow of those running from the violence towards the community of Tawila, roughly 80km (50 miles) west of el-Fasher, had grown in the past few days, as stated by UNHCR spokesperson.
They were telling terrible tales of violence, featuring rape, and the humanitarian group was finding it difficult to locate sufficient accommodation and nourishment for them.
Each child was affected by malnutrition, she added.
It is estimated that more than 150,000 individuals are still stranded in el-Fasher, which had been the military's last fortress in the western part of Darfur.
The RSF has rejected broad claims that the killings in el-Fasher are ethnically motivated and resemble a practice of the Arab paramilitaries focusing on non-Arab communities.
Yet the RSF has custodied one of its members, Abu Lulu, who has been accused of summary executions.
The force released video depicting the member's arrest after identification that he was behind the death of numerous unarmed men near el-Fasher.
Social media platform has confirmed that it has removed the account associated with Lulu. It is not clear whether he had managed the profile in his identity.
Sudan was plunged into a domestic fighting in April 2023 when a vicious contest for control erupted between its military and the RSF.
The conflict has resulted in a famine and claims of mass killing in the Darfur area.
In excess of 150,000 individuals have died in the fighting across the country, and approximately 12 million have left their dwellings in what the UN has described as the world's largest humanitarian emergency.
The seizure of el-Fasher reinforces the geographic split in the country, with the Rapid Support Forces now in dominance of the western region and much of bordering Kordofan to the south, and the military occupying the capital, Khartoum, central and eastern areas along the coastal region.
The competing factions had been collaborators - gaining control together in a coup in 2021 - but split over an foreign-endorsed plan to transition to civilian rule.
