Sudan’s military commander has announced that he will withdraw his soldiers from their last stronghold in Darfur, amid a stern warning from the United Nations over reports of “atrocities” by the militia currently in control of the city of El Fasher.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s announcement came late Monday, a day after the militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the main Sudanese army base in El Fasher and declared victory there.
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The withdrawal of troops from El Fasher leaves more than 250,000 people, half of them children, under RSF control. Aid groups reported chaotic conditions there, including killings, arrests, and attacks on hospitals.
Al-Burhan said in a statement that the soldiers had decided to withdraw completely from the city, hoping to protect civilians from further violence.
He said the troops were withdrawn because of the “systematic destruction and systematic killing of civilians” by the RSF, adding that the army wanted to “protect civilians and the rest of the city from destruction.”
“We are determined to avenge what happened to our people in El Fasher,” he said. “As Sudanese citizens, we will hold these criminals accountable.”
El Fasher’s fall to the RSF could lead to a new division in South Sudan, more than a decade after its founding. The latest war began in April 2023, when tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into fighting in the capital, Khartoum. The ensuing conflict left tens of thousands of people dead and more than 12 million displaced.
Footage posted on social media since Sunday showed RSF fighters celebrating in and around the former army base of El Fasher. Other footage shows RSF fighters shooting and beating people as they try to flee. Many people were shown being detained.
The atrocities of El Fasher
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday that the developments represented a “terrifying escalation of the conflict” and that “the level of suffering we are witnessing in Sudan is intolerable”.
The UN human rights office said RSF fighters reportedly committed atrocities in El Fasher, including “summary executions” of civilians attempting to flee the attack, and said there were “indications of an ethnically homicidal motive.”
“The risk of further large-scale ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is increasing by the day,” said Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group that tracks the conflict, described the RSF attack on El Fasher as a “heinous massacre” and said dozens of people were killed. RSF fighters went on a rampage in parts of El Fasher, looting hospitals and other medical facilities and “destroying what remains of vital medical infrastructure,” the network said in a statement.
The Darfur Human Rights Network said RSF had detained more than 1,000 civilians, describing this as “systematic targeting of civilians, arbitrary detention, and possible acts amounting to war crimes.”
The Sudanese Journalists Union said one of those detained was a local journalist, one of the few remaining in the city. The group warned of a possible “mass violation” in El Fasher, similar to what happened in Juneina, another Darfur city, where RSF fighters killed hundreds of people in 2023.
The Sudanese Doctors Union, Sudan’s professional organization for doctors, said RSF had turned El Fasher into a “brutal murder scene” and called RSF’s actions in Sudan “a barbaric policy aimed at terrorizing and exterminating civilians.” The group called on the international community to classify the RSF as a “terrorist” organization.
Mathilde Vu, Sudan advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera that information coming out of El Fasher is sparse and that civilians in the area are at grave risk.
“We have been trying for the past 24 hours to contact El Fasher’s partners without success,” she said.
“So it’s very difficult to understand the level of severity right now… but we’re increasingly seeing reports of mass atrocities, executions, kidnappings and excruciating suffering,” she said.
“I have to say that for now, no one is safe in El Fasher.”
Suspected war crime
The United Nations children’s agency said 260,000 civilians were trapped in El Fasher before Sunday’s attack, half of them children.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration said more than 26,000 people had fled their homes as of Monday, taking refuge in rural areas and the overwhelmed nearby town of Tawira.
At least 47 people, including nine women, were killed last weekend when RSF fighters rioted in the town of Bara in the central Kordofan region, according to the Sudanese Doctors Network.
RSF evolved from the notorious government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed, which committed atrocities against Sudanese people during the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.
The recent war has killed more than 40,000 people and left parts of the country, including the El Fasher region, plunged into famine, creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The conflict has been marked by serious atrocities, including ethnically motivated killings and rape, according to the United Nations and human rights groups.
The International Criminal Court announced it was investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
