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The volunteer nurse Nawal Khalil had been volunteering as a healthcare worker for the past three years at El Fasher South hospital as the city became taken over on Sunday by RSF paramilitaries. She was busy treating patients, featuring one senior woman in need of a transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“They killed six wounded soldiers plus civilian patients in their beds – including some women,” she recounts. “I don’t know what happened regarding my other patients. I had to run after they raided the medical facility.”

Khalil, aged 27, was hit by a bullet in her right foot and upper leg during the RSF's seizure of the nearby military headquarters. She ran from the urban area and traveled on foot for one day, wounded and without nourishment, to arrive at Garney town. “During the journey, they took my phone and money,” she describes. “I ended up with nothing.”

Over a thousand individuals – including women and children – journeyed by walking for 48 hours to get to the settlement of Tawila within North Darfur after fleeing El Fasher, which was captured after a year-and-a-half-long siege.

The town of Tawila, around 55 kilometers to the west 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 Joint Forces – who are allied with Sudan’s army – blamed the RSF with murdering over 2,000 civilians following the urban center's takeover. The UN reported there were videos showing “dozens of unarmed men either being shot or deceased, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Background Context

Hostilities commenced in Khartoum during April of 2023 as a growing contest for power involving the two key groups of the armed forces leadership finally turned deadly.

From one perspective stand the Sudanese military forces, who remain broadly loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Challenging him exist the irregular troops of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an assembly of militia groups that obey the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti.

The RSF was initially founded by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab anti-rebellion militia known as the Janjaweed, which quickly became synonymous with massive human rights violations. In 2013, Bashir transformed the group into the RSF, deploying them to crush a new uprising in southern Darfur.

The conflict has plunged Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in modern times, according to UN officials. It has produced the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, dispersing over 10 million individuals within the country and 4 million who have fled to adjacent nations, putting mounting pressure upon Chad and South Sudan.

Present Circumstances

Per observer reports, thousands more civilians continue to be held by the RSF and allied militias in the Garney area, southwest from El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the allied Joint Forces and other militant organizations that had been fighting alongside the army. They are apparently detained because they cannot afford ransom requests of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (£6,000 to £12,000), according to survivors who arrived in Tawila. Those unable to pay remain imprisoned for several days, and occasionally released only after developing critical health conditions.

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

The individual Adam Yagoub, twenty-eight years old, a chauffeur from Sennar in central Sudan, barely avoided execution after being captured by three camel-riding militiamen in the Garney vicinity.

“They wanted to cut my head off with a blade,” he recounts, showing his arm, that one combatant struck with the stock of a Kalashnikov. “Subsequently one identified me – his sibling had collaborated with me – and begged them not to kill me. Our group contained 18 individuals who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I assume the others died.”

Yagoub states he observed 22 corpses close to what he described as a “fake well” utilized by RSF forces and allied militias along the Garney-Tawila route. “It’s a trap,” he comments. “Individuals travel all day lacking water, and when they reach it, the militias are waiting. They slaughtered 22 men on that spot and took the bodies away to obscure them.”

A different medical worker who escaped El Fasher South hospital after the attack on Sunday stated RSF combatants came in through one gate and commenced firing upon patients within the emergency department, murdering no less than eight. “We ran out via another entrance, however they struck my head with a rifle,” he states.

Through a video declaration on Wednesday, the RSF commander, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, called Hemedti, declared that any fighter or officer who had “violated the right of any individual would face consequences.

Several people who got away El Fasher utilized hours hiding near the army’s artillery unit prior to escaping westward under darkness's protection. Previously displaced households from Abu Shouk camp in the city were forced to move again, taking asylum in the Daraja Oula district before eventually heading for Tawila.

People apprehended by RSF forces in Garney were reportedly given {water mixed with flour|flour