Eyewitnesses describe scenes of mass killings, extortion, and a gruesome escape through a trench filled with corpses as nearly 90,000 people flee El-Fasher following its capture by the Rapid Support Forces.
TINE, Chad – Survivors arriving at refugee camps in eastern Chad are sharing harrowing accounts of the fall of El-Fasher in Sudan, describing a city descending into a massacre where the scent of death and the sight of oozing blood have become seared into their memories.
The United Nations estimates that nearly 90,000 people have fled the city in the past two weeks, many arriving in Chad after arduous journeys without food. Their testimonies to AFP detail atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which captured the army’s last Darfur stronghold on October 26 after a prolonged siege.
Mounir Abderahmane, 16, was at a city hospital when RSF fighters entered. “They summoned seven nurses and ushered them into a room. We heard gunshots and I saw blood seeping out from under the door,” he recounted, his voice breaking. He fled with his wounded father, who died during the escape.
Other refugees described a city under relentless drone attack in the days before its fall, forcing residents into makeshift shelters with little sustenance. “Every time I went up to get some air, I saw new corpses in the street,” said Hamid Souleymane Chogar, 53.
The escape itself was a gauntlet of horror. To leave the city, families had to navigate a massive trench dug by the RSF to surround El-Fasher, which had become a mass grave.
“We had to climb down into the ditch to escape, negotiating the morass of bodies so we wouldn’t step on them,” said Samira Abdallah Bachir, 29, who escaped with her three young children.
Mahamat Ahmat Abdelkerim, who was hiding from RSF patrols, found temporary shelter in a house filled with the dead. “The blood was still oozing from their corpses,” he shuddered. Those who made it past the trench then faced RSF checkpoints where fighters demanded exorbitant sums—$800 to $1,600—for safe passage.
The fall of El-Fasher marks a devastating turn in Sudan’s civil war, a conflict between the RSF and the national army that has killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly 12 million, and triggered what the UN calls the world’s most extensive hunger crisis.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
