Since the powerful paramilitary group launched its major assault on the city last week, the UN human rights office has received “horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement,” said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
Speaking from Nairobi to journalists in Geneva, Magango said multiple testimonies had been gathered from residents who fled in terror as the city fell, surviving the “threatening journey to Tawila, approximately 70 kilometres away”, a three to four-day trek on foot.
According to the International Organisation for Migration, more than 36 000 people have fled since Saturday, mostly on foot, to Tawila, a town already hosting over 652 000 displaced people.
The RSF, which emerged from the Janjaweed militia accused of atrocities during the Darfur conflict two decades ago, has been locked in a brutal war with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023.
Sudan is now the site of the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis, with 14 million people displaced out of a population of 51 million. Famine, cholera, and other diseases are spreading rapidly.
The RSF seized El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, following more than 500 days of siege after forcing Sudan’s army to withdraw earlier this week. Disturbing reports indicate that sick and wounded civilians were killed inside the Saudi Maternity Hospital and in neighbourhoods being used as temporary medical centres.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 460 patients and companions were killed in the hospital massacre. “These extremely grave allegations raise urgent questions as to the circumstances of these killings in what should be places of safety,” Magango said, calling for an independent, transparent, and prompt investigation.
OHCHR also received alarming reports of sexual violence, including the gang rape of at least 25 women at a shelter for displaced people near El Fasher University. Witnesses said RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint.
The WHO confirmed that attacks on health workers and facilities continue, with six health professionals, four doctors, a nurse, and a pharmacist abducted, and the Saudi Maternity Hospital was attacked five times in October alone.
Teresa Zakaria, head of WHO’s Humanitarian Operations Unit, said the agency is currently unable to assist those injured in the multiple attacks. So far this year, WHO has verified 189 attacks across Sudan, resulting in 1 670 deaths and 419 injuries. “86% of all these attack-related deaths have occurred this year alone,” she said, adding that “attacks are getting deadlier.”
–UN/ChannelAfrica–
