JOHANNESBURG:The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, has warned that the fate of hundreds of thousands fleeing ethnically targeted violence from Sudan’s western city of El-Fasher was unknown as satellite images showed suspected mass graves.
“Our main concern is that though we have seen approximately 5,000 people coming out of El-Fasher toward Tawila, we don’t know where the other hundreds of thousands have gone,” newly elected MSF president Javid Abdelmoneim said.
“That is worrying given the ethnic nature of targeting of violence toward civilians by the RSF,” he said in Johannesburg.
The town of Tawila is about 70 km to the west of El-Fasher, and communications remain largely cut off in the region.
I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing within the city.
Volker Turk, UN human rights chief
Those who reach shelter in Tawila find themselves stranded in a barren area with barely enough tents, many of them improvised from patched tarps and sheets, according to a video posted by the group Sudan’s IDPs and Refugee Camps.
It shows children running across the area as a few adults carry a large pot of food, hoping it will be enough to feed the growing crowds of displaced.
Aid groups said tens of thousands of Sudanese had fled to overcrowded camps to escape reported atrocities in El-Fasher, and the UN human rights chief warned that many others are still trapped.
Rapid Support Forces, RSF, last month seized control of El-Fasher in the Darfur region following an 18-month siege. Reports have emerged of executions, sexual violence, and abductions in and around El-Fasher.
Survivors had recounted to MSF “harrowing” stories of “ethnically targeted torture, rape and summary executions,” Abdelmoneim said.
Six out of 10 adults screened had been starved, he added.
“I’ve never seen anything so shocking in all my 15 years of work,” he added.
The UK-born doctor joined MSF in 2009 and has done missions in Iraq, Haiti, Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, and Sierra Leone during the West Africa Ebola epidemic.
The fall of El-Fasher gave the RSF control over all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan would effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, or HRL, said on Thursday that it found evidence consistent with “body disposal activities.”
The report identified “at least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves at a mosque and the former Children’s Hospital.”
The Sudan war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions, and triggered the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
Since the RSF seized El-Fasher on Oct. 26, more than 16,200 people have fled to the camps in Tawila, said Adam Rojal, the spokesperson for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.
The displaced in Tawila are in urgent need of food, medicine, shelter materials and psychosocial support, said Rojal.
He said that families often survive on just two meals a day — and sometimes only one.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that around 82,000 people had fled the city and surrounding areas as of Nov. 4, heading to safe spots including Tawila.
MSF said on Friday that 300 people arrived in Tawila on Thursday alone after fleeing El-Fasher.
MSF teams reported “extremely high levels of malnutrition among children and adults.”
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned that those left behind in El-Fasher are at risk.
“Today, traumatized civilians are still trapped inside El-Fasher and are being prevented from leaving,” he said in Geneva.
“I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing within the city,” he added. “And for those who manage to flee, the violence does not end, as the exit routes themselves have been the scenes of unimaginable cruelty.”
The fighting has spread across Darfur and to the neighboring Kordofan region, with both emerging as the epicenter of Sudan’s war over the past months. Early this week, a drone attack in El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan province, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens more.
A military official said that the army intercepted two Chinese-made drones that targeted El-Obeid on Saturday morning.
Jalale Getachew Birru, an analyst for East Africa with Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, said in a statement that the fall of El-Fasher and rising violence in North Kordofan marked a strategic victory for the RSF, but exacerbated human suffering.
He estimated that at least 2,000 people were killed across Sudan in a single week between Oct. 26 and Nov. 1.
“These events not only deepen Sudan’s humanitarian crisis but also signal the RSF’s growing capacity to expand toward central Sudan, threatening to reverse the success of the Sudanese armed forces and returning the violence to the relatively calm central Sudan,” said Birru.
