El-Fasher’s terrifying escape from Darfur

Abdulqadir Abdullah Ali suffered severe nerve damage in his leg during the long siege of the Sudanese town of El Fasher because he could not obtain medication for his diabetes.

The 62-year-old walks with a heavy limp, but he was so panicked when fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) finally took the town in the western Darfur region that he felt no pain while running.

“The morning the RSF arrived, bullets, many bullets and explosives exploded,” he says.

“People were out of control [with fear]they ran out of their houses and everyone ran in different directions, the father, the son, the daughter – running.”

The fall of El-Fasher after 18 months of siege constitutes a particularly brutal chapter in the civil war in Sudan.

The BBC visited a tent camp set up in northern Sudan, in army-controlled territory, to hear first-hand the stories of those who managed to escape. The team was monitored by authorities throughout the visit.

The RSF has been fighting the regular army since April 2023, when a power struggle between them escalated into war.

The capture of El-Fasher was a major victory for the paramilitary group, pushing the army out of its last stronghold in Darfur.

But evidence of mass atrocities has drawn international condemnation and focused more American attention on trying to end the conflict.

Warning: This report contains details that some readers may find distressing.

We found Mr. Ali wandering in the camp, located in the desert about 770 kilometers northeast of el-Fasher, near the town of al-Dabbah.

He was trying to register his family for a tent.

“They [RSF fighters] “They were shooting at people, the elderly, civilians, with live ammunition, they were shooting at them with their weapons,” he explained to us.

“Some members of the RSF came with their cars. If they saw that someone was still breathing, they ran over them.”

Mr Ali said he ran when he could, crawling on the ground or hiding when the threat got too close. He managed to reach the village of Gurni, a few kilometers from el-Fasher.

Gurni was the first stop for many people fleeing the town, including Mohammed Abbaker Adam, a local official at the nearby Zamzam camp for displaced people.

Mr. Adam withdrew to El-Fasher when Zamzam was invaded by the RSF in April, and left the day before the town was captured in October.

He grew a white beard to appear older, in the hope that it would lead to more lenient treatment.

“The road here was strewn with deaths,” he said.

“They shot some people directly in front of us, then carried them away and threw them away. And on the road, we saw dead bodies in the open, unburied. Some had been there for two or three days.”

“So many people are scattered,” he added. “We don’t know where they are.”

Some of those who did not make the long journey to al-Dabbah managed to get to the humanitarian center in Tawila, about 70 km from el-Fasher.

Others entered Chad. But the UN says less than half of the 260,000 people who were in the city before its fall have not been found.

Aid agencies believe many people have not made it very far, unable to escape due to danger, detention or the cost of getting out.

Mr. Adam said the fighters also raped women, corroborating widespread accounts of sexual violence.

“They would take a woman behind a tree, or take her away from us, out of our sight, so you couldn’t see with your own eyes,” he explained.

“But you would hear him screaming, ‘Help me, help me.’ And she would come and say, ‘They raped me.'”

There are mainly women in the camp, and many do not want to be identified to protect those who remain.

A 19-year-old woman told us that RSF fighters at a checkpoint took a girl from the group she was traveling with and had to leave her behind.

“I was scared,” she said. “When they took her out of the car at the checkpoint, I was afraid that at every checkpoint they would take a girl. But they just took her, and that was it until we got here.”

She had traveled here with her younger sister and brother. His father, a soldier, had been killed in combat. His mother was not in El-Fasher when the disaster struck.

So the three siblings fled the city on foot with their grandmother, but she died before reaching Gurni, leaving them to continue alone.

“We didn’t take enough water because we didn’t know the distance was so great,” explains the young woman.

“We walked and walked and my grandmother fainted. I thought it might be due to lack of food or water.

“I checked her pulse, but she didn’t wake up, so I found a doctor in a nearby village. He came and said, ‘Your grandmother gave you her soul.’ I was trying to keep it together because of my sister and brother, but I didn’t know how I was going to tell my mom.”

They were all particularly worried about their 15-year-old brother, because the RSF suspected that the fugitives had fought alongside the army.

The boy described his ordeal at a checkpoint when all the young men were taken out of vehicles.

“RSF questioned us for hours in the sun,” he explains. “They said we were soldiers – some of the older ones probably were.

“The RSF fighters stood over us and circled around us, whipping us and threatening us with their weapons. I lost hope and told them, ‘Whatever you want to do to me, do it.’ »

Eventually, they let him go, after his 13-year-old sister told them that his father was dead and that he was her only brother. They found their mother in the al-Dabbah camp.

Many people describe the RSF separating elderly men and women from combat-age men.

This is what happened to Abdullah Adam Mohamed in Gurni, tearing him away from his three little daughters aged two, four and six. The perfumer had taken care of them since his wife was killed in a bombing four months ago.

“I gave my daughters to women [travelling with us]”, he told the BBC. “Then the RSF brought big vehicles, and we [the men] We were afraid that they would recruit us by force. So some of us ran and fled into the neighborhood.

“All night I asked myself: how am I going to find my children? I have already lost so many people, I was afraid of losing them too.”

Mr. Mohamed escaped, but others did not. Mr. Ali said he saw the RSF open fire on a group of men from a distance.

“They killed the men, they didn’t kill the women, but all the men were shot,” he told the BBC. “There were a lot of deaths and we fled.”

Mr. Ali and Mr. Adam left Gurni by donkey and went to the next village, Tur’rah, at night.

Mr. Mohamed also went to Tur’rah, where he found his daughters. From there, they took vehicles for the long journey to al-Dabbah.

Many arrived at the camp empty-handed. They left the city with almost nothing and had to pay to pass through checkpoints.

“The RSF fighters stripped us of everything we had: money, phones and even our beautiful clothes,” Mr. Adam said. “At each stop, they would have you call your loved ones to transfer money to your cell phone account before letting you pass to the next checkpoint.”

RSF told the BBC it rejected accusations of systematic abuses against civilians.

“The specific allegations raised – looting, killings, sexual violence or mistreatment of civilians – do not reflect our directives,” said Dr. Ibrahim Mukhayer, advisor to RSF chief General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

“Any RSF member proven to be responsible will be held fully responsible.”

He said the group believed the allegations of widespread atrocities were part of a politically motivated media campaign against them, led against them by what he called Islamist elements within Sudan’s military administration.

RSF has released videos to try to reshape the narrative, showing its officers greeting people fleeing El-Fasher, trucks bringing humanitarian aid and medical centers reopening.

Mr Mohamed told the BBC that RSF foot soldiers were more brutal when their officers were not present, while Mr Adam rejected what he described as attempts by the paramilitary group to improve its image.

“They have this strategy,” he said. “They gather 10 or 15 people, give us water and film us as if they are treating us nicely.

“Once the cameras leave, they will start beating us, treating us very badly and taking everything we have.”

Earlier this year, the United States determined that the RSF had committed genocide in Darfur.

But Sudan’s armed forces and their allied militias have also been accused of atrocities, including targeting civilians suspected of supporting the RSF and indiscriminate bombing of residential areas.

This particularly brutal chapter in Sudan’s devastating war caught the attention of US President Donald Trump. He promised to become more directly involved in ongoing U.S. efforts to broker a ceasefire.

For those who escaped El Fasher, this seems a distant prospect. They have been broken time and time again by this conflict and have no idea what comes next.

But they are resilient. Mr. Ali had not heard of Trump’s sudden interest; he had chased officials for permission to stay in the camp under a tent where, he said, “we can live and rest.”