Fears grow for thousands trapped in Sudan’s el-Fasher as few reach safety

CAIRO (AP) – Only a few thousand Sudanese have reached the nearest camp for displaced people in the days since Sudan’s paramilitary forces seized el-Fasher city, raising fears over tens of thousands who might still be trapped as survivors described killings and other atrocities, an aid group said Sunday.

The Rapid Support Forces took control of the western Darfur region last week, after ousting the rival Sudanese army from the city that was besieged for 18 months. Since then, reports and videos have circulated of RSF atrocities against civilians including beatings, killings and sexual assaults, according to testimonies by civilians and aid workers. The dead included at least 460 killed in the hospital, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. migration agency said Sunday it estimates that more than 8,000 people were displaced from el-Fasher on Saturday and Sunday. A total of 70,894 people have been displaced since the RSF took control, it said.

However, less than 6,000 have made it to the nearest camp in Tawila, 65 kilometers (40 miles) away, said Shashwat Saraf, Sudan director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs the camp.

Almost 1,000 people arrived in the last three days, he said.

“The numbers are still very few. We are not seeing the hundreds of thousands that we were expecting. If people are still in el-Fasher, it will be very difficult for them to survive,” he told The Associated Press by phone from Tawila.

The fall of el-Fasher marked a new turning point in the war between the RSF and Sudan’s armed forces, which erupted in April 2023. More than 40,000 people have been killed, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say the true number could be many times higher. The war has also displaced more than 14 million people and unleashed outbreaks of diseases, killing thousands.

“We feel that a lot of people are stuck in locations from where it is not safe for them to move, and they need to pay to move and they don’t have money to pay,” Saraf said.

Survivors who made the journey on foot have shared harrowing details of having to dodge gunmen shooting at them as they fled.

“People arriving in the camp are mostly disoriented and dehydrated with bruises all over. Sometimes they do not even remember their names, they have to be taken to the hospital and have IV fluids,” Saraf said.

Saraf also said that around 170 unaccompanied children, some of whom as young as 3 years old, trekked to Tawila without knowing where their family members were. They came along with older children or adults who were not their relatives.

In a news conference on Sunday, Sudan’s ambassador in Cairo, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, accused the RSF of carrying out war crimes in el-Fasher.

Adawi said that his government would not negotiate with the RSF, urging the international community to designate the group as a terrorist organization.

“The government of Sudan is calling on the international community to act immediately and effectively rather than just make statements of condemnation,” Adawi said.

Adawi renewed his government’s accusations that the United Arab Emirates has been arming the RSF, insisting that the Gulf state should not be involved in any mediation efforts.

The UAE has backed the RSF and opposed the Sudanese military, pointing to the army’s ties to Islamic forces that Abu Dhabi has long opposed. The UAE has denied the accusations despite evidence to the contrary.

When asked earlier on Sunday about his country’s support for the RSF, senior UAE diplomat Anwar Gargash did not directly answer the question while attending the annual Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain. He said that the international community made a “critical mistake” in supporting both the military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and his rival, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, when the army ousted a Western-backed power-sharing government in 2021.

“We all made the mistake when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrew the civilian government,” Gargash said. “That was, in my opinion, looking backward was a critical mistake. We should have put our foot down — all of us collectively.”

The UAE supports a three-month humanitarian ceasefire, with the two parties negotiating and a civilian transitional government formed in nine months, he said.

There are mounting fears that the RSF may expand its military campaign toward the country’s center once again, buoyed by its seizure of the entire Darfur region.

Twelve people were killed, including at least five children, in RSF attacks on two camps sheltering displaced people in the central Kordofan region, the Sudan Doctor Network, a medical group tracking the war, said on Saturday.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Fay Abuelgasim in Cairo, Egypt contributed to this report.