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Nawal Khalil had been serving as a nurse for the past three years in the El Fasher South medical facility when the city was captured on Sunday by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). She was occupied with patient care, among them an older female patient in need of a transfusion, as the assault commenced.

“They murdered six wounded military personnel and civilians in their beds – some of them women,” she recounts. “The outcome remains unknown regarding my other patients. I needed to escape as they invaded the hospital.”

Khalil, aged 27, was shot in the right foot and thigh as RSF fighters took control of the adjacent military command center. She ran from the urban area and traveled on foot for one day, hurt and lacking sustenance, to arrive at Garney town. “On the way, they confiscated my phone and money,” she says. “I ended up with nothing.”

In excess of 1,000 persons – including women and children – walked for two days to get to the settlement of Tawila within North Darfur after running from El Fasher, which was captured after an 18-month siege.

Tawila, approximately 34 miles westward away from El Fasher, is governed by of the SLA-AW group commanded by Abdul Wahid Mohamed al-Nur.

On Tuesday, the Joint Forces – that cooperate with the Sudanese army – blamed the RSF of killing more than 2,000 civilians since the fall of the city. United Nations officials stated there were videos showing “dozens of unarmed men being shot or lying dead, encircled by RSF combatants.”

Background Context

Hostilities commenced within Khartoum back on April 15, 2023 when an intensifying power struggle involving the two key groups of the armed forces leadership eventually resulted in fatalities.

Among the combatants stand the Sudanese military forces, that stay mostly faithful to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the nation's actual leader. Opposing him exist the irregular troops of the RSF paramilitary group, an assembly of militia groups that obey the former warlord General Dagalo, referred to as Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces were first created by the ex-dictator Omar al-Bashir himself as an Arab counterinsurgency militia known as the Janjaweed, which soon became linked with extensive brutalities. In 2013, Bashir converted the organization into the Rapid Support Forces, deploying them to crush a fresh rebellion in southern Darfur.

The war has pushed Sudan into “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in modern times, according to UN officials. It has created the planet's biggest displacement catastrophe, dispersing over 10 million individuals inside the nation along with 4 million refugees to adjacent nations, generating growing stress on Chad and South Sudan.

Current Situation Updates

Based on eyewitness accounts, thousands more civilians stay confined by RSF forces and partner militias in the Garney area, south-west of El Fasher. Many are former soldiers belonging to the Sudanese military, the allied Joint Forces and other armed groups which had been combatting together with the army. They are apparently detained as they lack funds for extortion payments of between 5m and 10m Sudanese pounds (approximately £6,000-£12,000), according to survivors who reached Tawila. Individuals incapable of paying have been held for multiple days, and occasionally freed only when developing critical health conditions.

The SLA-AW has apparently permitted military personnel escaping El Fasher to come into Tawila if they relinquish their arms.

A man named Adam Yagoub, aged 28, a driver from Sennar from central Sudanese regions, closely avoided death following his capture by three militiamen on camels in the Garney vicinity.

“They wanted to cut my head off with a knife,” he informs, exhibiting his limb, which one militant assaulted with the butt of an AK-47 rifle. “Then one of them recognised me – his brother had worked with me – and urged them not to execute me. We were 18 people who departed El Fasher collectively, yet merely eight reached Tawila. I think the others are dead.”

Yagoub says he saw 22 bodies close to what he described as a fraudulent water source utilized by RSF forces and partner armed groups along the Garney-Tawila route. “This is an ambush,” he explains. “People walk all day without water, and upon arriving there, the militiamen await. They killed 22 men there and took the bodies away to hide them.”

An additional nurse who fled the El Fasher South medical facility following Sunday's assault stated RSF combatants came in using one doorway and commenced firing upon patients within the emergency department, killing at least eight. “We fled through another gate, but they hit me on the head with a rifle,” he says.

Through a video declaration this past Wednesday, the head of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, stated that any military personnel or official who breached the rights of any civilian would be punished.

Several people who got away from El Fasher passed hours hiding near the army’s artillery unit before running west under darkness's protection. Families already uprooted originating from the urban Abu Shouk settlement were compelled to relocate again, seeking refuge in the Daraja Oula neighbourhood before eventually heading for Tawila.

Individuals seized by the RSF within Garney reportedly received {water mixed with flour|flour