A horrifying massacre has taken place in El-Fashir, a city in Sudan’s Darfur region, where more than 1,500 civilians were killed within just three days after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the area, according to both local and international sources.
Abubakar Ahmed, a member of the government forces, told Al Jazeera that he had been fighting for 550 days with the local defense group Popular Resistance to protect the city. But after El-Fashir fell on October 26, the army surrendered and withdrew, leaving around 250,000 civilians defenseless against the RSF.
Ahmed said, “The RSF brutally killed civilians and left their bodies lying on the streets. They showed no mercy to anyone.” He himself was wounded by a rocket attack but narrowly survived.
According to Doctors Network, at least 1,500 people were killed in the first three days after the RSF captured the city — among them 460 patients and their relatives from Al-Saoud Hospital. The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed the report.
Al Jazeera’s verification unit Sanad analyzed several videos showing RSF fighters standing beside piles of bodies and shooting unarmed young men in rows.
Following the massacre, more than 33,000 people have fled El-Fashir, taking refuge in nearby towns such as Tawila and Tine, about 60 kilometers away. However, many others remain trapped inside the city, hiding in homes or attempting to escape through the desert.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti) has stated that he will investigate the allegations of violence. However, eyewitnesses and survivors claim this was a planned campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting non-Arab communities.
The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) reported that RSF forces have also been killing those attempting to flee, adding that satellite imagery cannot fully capture the true scale of the atrocities.